Smash Notes

Back to Lucky #888 — My Tour of Designing Luck in China, Japan, and Korea.

What Is a Million-dollar License Plate?

Tim Ferriss says a million-dollar license plate is a real auction result. In February 2025, Hong Kong sold the registration mark 88 at a government auction for 11.4 million Hong Kong dollars, roughly 1.5 million U.S. dollars.

The same taste for eights shows up on a phone line. In 2003, Sichuan Airlines paid 2.33 million yuan, about 280,000 U.S. dollars at the time, for the customer hotline 8888-8888, eight eights in a row. The number is easy to remember and was meant to make customers happy, and the purchase can also buy a publicity halo. He calls that purchase the intersection of superstition and marketing.

Beijing put the same digit on a world stage. The Olympics opening ceremony started at 8 p.m. on August 8, 2008, and the city registered 15,646 marriages that day.

Transcript

Lucky #888 — My Tour of Designing Luck in China, Japan, and Korea ·

The Tim Ferriss Show

More from this episode

  1. Why Is Eight Lucky in Chinese Culture?Tim Ferriss says eight is lucky in Chinese culture because the Mandarin word for eight sounds like prosperity. Eight is ba.
  2. Why Does the Jin Mao Tower Have 88 Floors?Tim Ferriss says the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai has 88 floors because the client wanted an auspicious number.
  3. Why Do Hotels in East Asia Skip the Number Four?Tim Ferriss says hotels and other buildings in East Asia often skip floor numbers that contain a four, because four is the unlucky flip side of eight.
  4. Why Did a Casino Build a Room Around One Gambler's Birthday?Tim Ferriss says a casino built a private room around one gambler's birthday because both the player and the house want the room to feel lucky.
  5. Why Do Some U.S. Two-dollar Bills Start With 8888?Tim Ferriss says some U.S. two-dollar bills start with 8888 because the bureau that prints American money sold the luck of the number eight.
  6. Why Does Toyota Hide a Lucky Number in Its Name?Tim Ferriss says Toyota hides a lucky eight in its name. The founding family name was Toyoda, spelled with a D.
  7. Why Does the Korean Word for Fate Mean Eight Characters?Tim Ferriss says the everyday Korean word for a person's lot in life, palja, means eight characters.
  8. Why Can 666 Mean Good Luck in Chinese?Tim Ferriss says 666 can mean good luck in Chinese, not bad news in every place.

People

More answers like this

More with Tim Ferriss

Related episodes

Plays from this note through the rest of the episode.

Note

Weekly highlights

One letter a week.

The notes worth hearing, with the minute they were said.