If you’ve been in China long enough, you’ve probably noticed that special hand gestures are used to express the numbers from one to ten. 

Why is that? 

China has many different dialects and sometimes it can be confusing for people from different regions to understand one another. Furthermore, a lot of words sound very similar in Chinese. For example the word for the number four, si, sounds very similar to ten, shi. Therefore, using hand signs can be very useful to clear up confusion when bargaining or doing business.

So let’s take a look at what these simple gestures are and how to form them. We’ve provided the characters and pinyin prononciations of each number as well.

1. One (一, ‘yī’)

Extend your index finger.

2. Two (二, ‘èr’ or 两, ‘liǎng’)

Extend both your index finger and middle finger.

3. Three (三, ‘sān’)

Extend your index finger, middle finger and ring finger.

4. Four (四, ‘sì’)

Extend your all four of your fingers (index, middle, ring and pinky).

5. Five (五, ‘wǔ’)

Extend all of your fingers plus your thumb.

6. Six (六, ‘liù’)

Make a “hang loose” sign: extend your pinky to one side and your thumb in the opposite direction. Fold your index, middle and ring fingers down against your palm.

7. Seven (七, ‘qī’)

All fingertips touch, or just the tips of the index finger, middle finger and thumb. Malaysian and/or Singaporean Chinese might interpret this as the number five. Locals of Guangdong and Hong Kong will interpret this as the number eight. This is the most common way. However, there is an alternative way where the thumb is extended, and the index and middle finger are also extended.

8. Eight (八, ‘bā’)

Point and extend your index finger in the air, and also extend your thumb, so that you make an “L” shape. Some people from other regions (Malaysian or Singaporean Chinese or people from Taiwan, Guangdong or Hong Kong) might interpret this as the number seven.

9. Nine (九, ‘jiǔ’)

Curl your index finger. Other fingers can be closed like a fist.

10. Ten (十, ‘shí’)

Make a fist. (Though this can also be interpreted as “zero”).

An alternative way is to take both index fingers of each hand and then cross them like the character for ten “十”.

So there you have it! Keep these in mind as they might come in handy next time you go to the supermarket.

Growing economic ties between Africa and China has reportedly brought about a significant increase in interracial unions between Chinese and Africans.

While mixed-race marriages may be a relatively new concept in China, they have reportedly been on the rise in recent years as the country’s trade and investment continue to flood into Africa.

image via YouTube

With over one million Chinese migrants now living in Africa and about half a million Africans living in China, the situation is not at all that surprising.

“Forty years ago, it was all but impossible for a foreign man or woman to live in China, let alone marry a Chinese,” Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown observed. “But today, marriages like this are no longer exceptional … marrying a foreigner is no longer regarded as marrying down in the way it perhaps once was here.”

Such is the case of Sandra Made, a native of Cameroon who married  Zou Qianshun in 2017.

After working in Africa for many months, Qianshun returned to his village in northeast China where he and his wife now earn money by streaming video of their day-to-day lives online.  

image via YouTube

Their “unconventional” marriage has proven to be a hit on social media as they rake in a respectable $1,000 in advertising revenue each month.

image via YouTube

“Nowadays there are more and more international marriages in China, even some of [my] friends also married foreigners,” Qianshun was quoted as saying. “Chinese have become more accepting of intermarriage.”

This illustrates a huge difference in the situation from a few decades ago when interracial marriages were unheard of in mainland China. According to government figures, there was no interracial union in the 1970’s in the Chinese mainland.

The increase in mixed marriages reportedly began in this current decade “with 53,000 such couples tying the knot in 2012” according to a BBC report in 2013.

Qianshun admitted however that despite a change in the attitude on interracial marriages in China, there are still those who are not happy about him marrying an African woman, including his own parents. 

“How can Chinese marry a Black woman? She can leave at any time,” Zhao Fu Qing, Qianshun’s mother said in an interview. “That’s why at the beginning, both my husband and I said NO to this marriage.”

image via YouTube

Still, Qianshun’s story can be regarded as a success compared to the stories of some African women who have claimed to be abandoned by Chinese men.

There have been reported cases of Chinese miners returning to China after impregnating Ghanaian women, leaving them alone to care for their mixed children.