An American friend living in Beijing oncesaid she refused to communicate with anyone whose email address consisted of astring of numbers, such as 62718298454@163.com. This made sense to me at thetime—why make email addresses as difficult to remember as phone numbers? But Isoon realized that issuing a blanket ban on number-based communications wouldmean cutting off just about every single Chinese person I knew.
我一位住在北京的美国女性朋友说过她拒绝接收任何带数字的电子邮箱地址，(url=mailto:比如62718298454@163.com)比如62718298454@163.com(/ur)。当时我也是这么认为的——为什么要把电子邮箱地址搞得和电话号码一样难记呢？但是我很快就意识到如果不接受中国人的这种习惯，那么你根本无法与任何中国人交流。
In the U.S., you really only have toremember two long numbers, ever: Your phone number and your Social Securitynumber. In China, you’re constantly barraged by digits: QQ numbers (QQ isChina's most popular chat service), email addresses, and even URLs. Forexample, the massive online retailer Jingdong Mall is at jd.com or, if thattakes too long to type, 3.cn. Check out 4399.com to seeone of China’s first and largest online gaming websites. Buy and sell used carsat 92.com. Want to purchase train tickets? It’s as easy as 12306.cn.
在美国，你只需记住两串长号码，分别是你自己的电话号码以及你的社保号码。在中国，你需要记住的数字号码真是太多了：QQ号码（QQ是中国最著名的聊天工具），电子邮箱号码，甚至是网站网址。举个例子，京东的网址是jd.com，或者如果你觉得太长的话，直接输入3.cn就可以。4399是中国首个也是最大的在线游戏网站。92.com是二手车买卖网站。想购买火车票吗，那就直接输入12306.cn。
Why the preference for digits over letters?It mostly has to do with ease of memorization. To a native English-speaker,remembering a long string of digits might seem harder than memorizing a word.But that's if you understand the word. For many Chinese, numbers are easier toremember than Latin characters. Sure, Chinese children learn the pinyin systemthat uses the Roman alphabet to spell out Mandarin words (for example, the wordfor "Internet", is spelled wangluo in pinyin). And yes, Arabic numerals (1-2-3)are technically just as much a foreign import as the Roman alphabet (A-B-C).But most Chinese are more familiar with numbers than letters, especially thosewho didn’t go to college. To many, "Hotmail.com" might as well beCyrillic.
为什么中国更喜欢数字，而不是字母呢？这与记忆相关。对于英语为母语者的人来说，记住一长串的数字比记住一个单词要难得多。当然，首先你要对这个单词熟悉。而对于许多中国人来说，记住数字比记住拉丁字母要容易。当然，中国的小孩使用罗马字母的拼音来学习汉语单词（比如，中文中的“网络”，拼音就是wangluo）。当然，阿拉伯数字（1，2，3）和罗马字母一样也是舶来品。但是大多数中国人更熟悉阿拉伯数字而非罗马字母，特别是那些没接受过高等教育的中国人。对于许多中国人来说，Hotmail.com就如同斯拉夫字母一样难懂。
The digits in a domain name usually aren'trandom. The Internet company NetEase uses the web address 163.com—a throwbackto the days of dial-up when Chinese Internet users had to enter 163 to getonline. The phone companies China Telecom and China Unicom simplyreappropriated their well-known customer service numbers as domain names, 10086.cnand 10010.cn, respectively.
网址中的数字通常来说并不是随机挑选的。网易的网址是163.com，这可以追溯到以前的中国网民上网时都得先拨163才能连上网络。而中国移动和中国联通干脆用自己的热线电话来做网址，10086.cn 和 10010.cn。
Digits are even more convenient when youconsider that the words for numbers are homophones for other words. The URL forthe massive e-commerce site Alibaba, for example, is 1688.com,pronounced "yow-leeyoh-ba-ba"—close enough! Those digits can just as often haveindividual meanings. The videosharing site 6.cn works because the word for "six" is a near-homophone forthe word “to stream.” The number five is pronounced wu, which sounds like wo,which means "I". The number one is pronounced yao, whichwith a different tone means "want". So the job-hunting site 51job.com sounds alot like “I want a job.” Likewise, to order McDonald's delivery online, just goto 4008-517-517.com, the "517" of which sounds a bit like "I want to eat". (AnEnglish equivalent might be the oldradio jingle, “How many cookies did Andrew eat? Andrew 8-8000.”)
数字的另外一个好处是可以用来做同音异形异意字。比如阿里巴巴，其网站就是1688.com，在音调上非常相似。还有视频分享网站6.cn，其中的6发音相当于流量的“流”。5就是我，1就是幺，还可以是“要”的意思。所以求职网站51job.com听起来就像“我要工作”。还有麦当劳的订餐热线，4008-517-517.com，517读起来就像“我要吃”。
This kind of number-language has become aninfinitely malleable shorthand among Chinese web users: 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".Thenumbers 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". (See herefor more examples.) Chinese has plenty of other number-based slang, such aserbaiwu, or "250",which means "idiot", or "38", pronounced sanba, which means"bitch". And of course there’s the association of certain numbers with good orbad luck, and the subsequent demand for addresses and phone numbers with lotsof 8s ("get rich") and minimal 4s ("die"). Back in 2003, a Chinese airline paid $280,000for the phone number 88888888.
这种数字语言在中国网民中的应用可以说是屡试不爽（1就是要，2就是爱，4就是死或者世或者是，5就是我，7就是妻子或者吃，8就是发或者罢了，9就是长久或者酒精。比如5201314，就是我爱你一生一世；0748就是你去死吧；687是对不起的意思。中国还存在其他一些数字俚语，比如250代表白痴，38代表三八，4是最少使用的。2003年，中国一航空公司花重金28万美元买下88888888这个电话号码。
Why don't Chinese web addresses just useMandarin characters? Because that’s a pain, too. The Internet Corporation forAssigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which sets the rules for web addressesglobally, has periodicallyhypedthe expansion of domain names to include non-Latinate scripts, but Chinese websites have yet to take full advantage. Some devices require a special plug-into type in Chinese URLs, and even then it takes longer to type or write outcharacters than to input a few digits. Plus, for web sites that want to expandinternationally but don’t want to alienate foreign audiences with unfamiliarcharacters, numbers are a decent compromise.
为什么中国网址中不直接使用汉语呢？因为这对中国人来说简直是一种痛。为全球网站地址设置规则的是互联网名称与数字地址分配机构，该机构定期的进行域名扩张，以涵盖更多的非拉丁文本，但是中国的网站并不能充分的享受到这种好处。一些设备需要特殊的插件才能输入中文的网址，即使能够输入中文，其速度也比直接输入数字来得慢。此外，如果某些网站想打入国际市场，那么就不宜使用中文，所以数字就是个很好的选择。
Still, the numbers/letters divide isemblematic of the Internet's built-in bias: Even more than two decades afterits birth, it's still a fundamentally American system. (Sorry, Tim Berners-Lee.) ICANNis an American non-profit corporation, though the U.S. recently agreedto hand it over to a "global multi-stakeholder community" in 2015. ASCII, thecharacter-encoding scheme that was long used on most web pages, is short forthe "American Standard Code for Information Interchange." In 2012, the UnitedStates refusedto sign an international telecommunications treaty, supported by bothRussia and China, that would shift the Internet away from its currentU.S.-centric form of governance. In other words, the structure of the Internetis a constant reminder of American digital hegemony, from WiFi standards toGPS. Even the ".cn" at the end of Chinese URLs comes from the English word forChina, not the Chinese word for China. You can’t blame other countries forwanting to tell the American 250s to 0748.
然而，数字与字母的分别实在是因特网固有偏见的象征：即使因特网诞生20多年后的今天，其本质上依然是美国的系统（蒂姆·伯纳斯-李乃互联网发明者）。虽然美国同意在2015年将该机构交给一家全球多方利益相关组织管理，但互联网名称与数字地址分配机构依然是美国的一家非营利性公司。长期以来大多数网页上所使用的都是美国信息交换标准码——一种字符编码方案。2012年，美国拒绝签署一项受俄罗斯和中国支持的国际通讯协议，该协议的目的是使互联网摆脱以美国为中心的管理架构。换句说话，目前的互联网结构总会让人想起美国的数字霸权，从WiFi标准到GPS。甚至中国网址末尾中的.cn都是“中国”的英文缩写，而非中文。所以难怪其他国家会用0748来骂美国250们。