Why 168?

Currently, we see a lot of establishments that have 168 on it. Previously we only see this on car plates, mobile phone number, and now on the name of the establishments such as restaurants, malls, internet shops, residential projects, etc... (like 168 Mall in Divisioria, Manila )

But what is the main point?

168 in Chinese is 一六八 (pinyin: yi liu ba, Fujian: chi lok huat) and it is sounds like (homophone) 一路發 (pinyin: yi lu fa, Fujian: chi lo huat) means one way luck. In Chinese language we have a lot of homophone, same sound different meaning. We can create a sentence by using number and here are some examples:

• 
  
  9413 - 九死一生 - 90% of dying and 10% chance of living


• 
  
  49 - dead forever


• 
  
  54 - will not die 無死


• 
  
  888 - 發發發 (luck luck luck)

So as we see even on Internet we can see a lot of people specially Chinese on the Internet adding this number on their user names or email addresses

Here are some definition of the number based from their homophones

1 - yi - one

2 - er/liang - a pair, since good things comes with pair

3 - san - birth (生, sheng) or mountain (山, shan)

4 - si - unlucky - sound like dead 四＝死(dead)

5 - wu -negate or not (sounds like) - 五＝無(none)

6 - liu - go or way, since going the way is like keep on going - 六 sounds near 路(liu)

7 - qi - considered as a universal lucky number, also togetherness or arise (起).... but in some cases 7th month (7月) is considered unlucky month

8 - ba -is the luckiest number of all since it sounds like luck (發)

9 - jiu - some means everlasting (永久- yong jiu). But in some Chinese they don't want 9 but I forgot the explanation.

very lucky money 888168 (發發發一路發)

For further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_in_Chinese_culture

http://www.beijing-china-guide.com/chinese-numerology.html