The reason for this preference is memorization. While English speaker find it extremely hard to remember a long string of digits, Chinese, on the other hand, are very good at remembering numbers. They are able to recognize numbers than alphabets, most especially the unlearned ones. Their children have mastered the Pinyin system, which is used for transcribing the Mandarin pronunciations of Chinese characters.
The digits in a domain name usually aren’t random. The Internet company NetEase uses the web address 163.com—a throwback to the days of dial-up when Chinese Internet users had to enter 163 to get online. The phone companies China Telecom and China Unicom simply reappropriated their well-known customer service numbers as domain names, 10086.cn and 10010.cn, respectively.
Even more interesting is the digits are used by Chinese web users in chat as words. For example, 1 means “want,” 2 means “love,” 4 means “dead” or “world” or “is,” 5 means “I,” 7 means “wife” or “eat,” 8 means “get rich” or “not,” and 9 means “long time” or “alcohol.” The numbers 5201314, for example, mean 我爱你一生一世,or “I will love you forever”; 0748 means “go die”; and 687 means “I’m sorry.”
