Why Can 666 Mean Good Luck in Chinese?

Tim Ferriss says 666 can mean good luck in Chinese, not bad news in every place. The phrase 六六大顺 works like 一路顺风, a bon voyage that wishes the wind at your back and smooth sailing on the journey. The sound of 666 can be liu, like smooth, or lu, like a road or a path.

On Chinese New Year, red envelopes of money called hongbao sometimes hold amounts in sixes, such as 600 or 666. Whether a number is lucky depends on where you are. Even inside China, different dialects change the pronunciation, and the meaning often comes down to which word the sound resembles.

He walks through the pun on purpose. 六六大顺 is the smooth-sailing cousin of a bon voyage, and the red-envelope amounts are the ordinary place people meet that pun. Dialect by dialect, the same digits pick up a different neighbor word, which is why six can be lucky in one place and another word entirely somewhere else.