Zaijian Beijing!

Greetings from Silicon Valley. I left Beijing early Saturday morning, having slept all of half an hour. I was crazed for time the last few days, so I'll continue to write about some of my experiences in Beijing. (I was within 20 minutes of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City but never managed to get there.)

In Beijing, I had to buy a SIM card to get a local telephone number. I was given a binder of telephone numbers to choose from. I haphazardly pointed to one -- but my local friends intervened and suggested others. Their choices were better, they explained, because the numbers were "good" -- more auspicious. They all contained the numbers eight, which in Cantonese is similar to "fortune" and six, similar to "luck" in Mandarin.

The numbers are so coveted you have to pay extra for them, as much as $45 U.S. -- nearly twice what the SIM cost. You also pay extra for easier-to-remember numbers. Sensing I'd have trouble getting my company to pay for good fortune, I chose a standard number. It has two 6s in it. A third 6 would assure lots of fortune but hell to pay.