It’s common knowledge that the Chinese are a superstitious bunch. Superstitions underlie their whole culture and society: red, for example, the colour of blood, is for the Chinese the colour of life – it is considered very favourable and is commonly used in weddings. The semi-precious jade stone is thought to bring luck and ward off evil spirits and is therefore a popular jewellery choice. Strangely, many Chinese customs and superstitions appear to be based on phonetics – the Chinese word for fish is yu, which sounds like the Chinese word for ‘lucky’, and so fish are considered lucky and feature highly in traditional Chinese art. One of the more bizarre modern beliefs is that having a moustache is unlucky; moustaches are, in consequence, now extremely rare in China.

As in many other cultures, numerology plays a big part in Chinese superstitions. Linked to death, the number 4 is the Chinese equivalent of our number 13. Many tower blocks in China, especially in the larger cities, omit the 4th floor entirely, preferring to confuse ignorant foreigners by going straight from number 3 to number 5. If the number 4 happens to crop up in a business’ address, area code or telephone number it is regarded as extremely unlucky, meaning that many such companies suffer because of people’s reluctance to use them. Contrary to Western tradition, the number 7 also signifies death, and the number 1 is said to signify loneliness.

On the other hand, the number 8 is considered very lucky, for two reasons. Firstly, the Chinese word for 8, ba, sounds like the word for ‘fortune’, fa. Also, the number 8 is inexorably linked with the teachings of the revered Buddha, who was born on the 8th day of the month in the Chinese calendar and often referred to the Noble Eightfold Path as the route to end all suffering. Because of its construed significance, properties with 8 in the address regularly command more on the housing market, as do apartments situated on the 8th floor. Also, things like car license plates featuring the sacred number are in high demand. In Chengdu, the unlikely telephone number 8888 8888 recently fetched the unbelievable sum of £135,000.

This obsession with the number 8 is the reason the Olympic Games officially started at 8 minutes past 8, local time, on the 8th day of the 8th month of the year 2008. All the eights. 8 seconds into that minute is considered the most magical of times, and comes around only once every 100 years. On the day of the opening ceremony, Beijing and other places in China played host to an unprecedented number of weddings, with young lovers believing that if they got hitched on this day of days they would enjoy a long, happy and trouble-free life together.

Existing couples had also been planning ahead for some considerable time, with maternity wings in hospitals reporting a sudden increase in demand for their services. Unbelievably, it was even claimed that some young mothers arranged to undergo caesarean sections on the 8th August, some several weeks premature, in the hope that being born on what has become widely known as ‘the luckiest day ever’ would give their precious offspring a head start in life. Paradoxically, however, sociologists predict that the opposite may, in fact, apply. In a country of 1.4 billion people, competition for jobs and college places is already extraordinarily intense, and any kind of baby boom only means increased competition when the babies grow up and all head for the campuses and workplaces simultaneously.

And that is just the start of the bad news. In a year blighted by natural disasters, extreme weather conditions including the country’s worst winter in fifty years, a constant underlying terrorist threat, and international criticism and embarrassments (Steven Spielberg, for example, resigned as Olympic artistic adviser in protest at China’s policy in Darfur) the Chinese government remained stubbornly optimistic about its big ‘coming out’ party. Nothing was going to be allowed to spoil it: in the weeks leading up to the Games the government went to extraordinary lengths to try to limit congestion and reduce pollution in order to make a good impression before the eyes of the world, and rumours even circulated that it was planning to intervene in the event of bad weather.

The authorities remained confident of putting on the greatest show the world has ever seen even when, a week before the £40 million opening ceremony at the newly-built ‘Bird’s Nest’ Olympic stadium, a rare total lunar eclipse overshadowed preparations in Beijing (it should be noted that in Chinese culture, eclipses are considered extremely unlucky).

Just as the powers-that-be could do nothing to influence or regulate cosmic alignment, it transpired that they were unable to totally control the belief systems of their citizens.

Each Olympic showdown has its own mascot. This year the Chinese government chose a total of five Fuwa, as they are affectionately known, and a lot of time and effort went into designing these playful cartoony mascots. Each was supposed to represent an intrinsic element of Chinese culture, and when arranged in the right order they spell out ‘Beijing welcomes you’ in Chinese characters. Cute. But look beneath the surface, as many have, and a worrying trend is clearly visible. To the dismay of the authorities (who are allegedly removing items as quickly as they spring up) users of Chinese message boards and networking sites such as Baidu and QQ are talking about the ‘Curse of the Fuwas’. From the evidence, it seems they might be on to something …

One Fuwa, christened Jingjing, is in the image of a panda, one of China’s best-loved animals and national treasures. However, many of China’s pandas live in Sichuan province, the scene of this year’s devastating earthquake that killed almost 80,000 people. Huanhuan resembles an Olympic torch, a symbol which will forever remind the Chinese of the many violent protests and security threats that marked the worldwide torch relay. Yingying resembles a Tibetan antelope, and so is said to represent the ongoing Tibetan unrest. Beibei is a fish, usually considered lucky but this year linked to the widespread flooding that decimated the southern regions in June and July, when rainy season hit.

The final Fuwa, Nini, is in the image of a swallow, another universally recognised Chinese symbol and a popular kite design. She has been linked to a fatal train crash in Weifang, Shandong province, on 28 April this year, which killed 70 and injured over 400 – Weifang holds a famous international annual kite festival and is even known in some quarters as ‘Kite City’. There were also fears that the swallow could in some way be emblematic of the Bird’s Nest stadium itself. And so it turned out, when hero-of-the-people Liu Xiang, who had been widely tipped to take gold, was forced to pull out of the men’s hurdles during the qualifying stages due to injury. It is hard for outsiders to comprehend the impact this had on the country, but the shocked and upset looks on the faces of the 90,000 spectators at the stadium and the tears shed by native journalists during the consequent press conference give some indication. England missing a penalty, it was not.

And as if this wasn’t enough, let’s examine the figures and key events more closely. The day that saw the heaviest snowfall in decades, paralyzing China’s transport and electricity networks, was 25 January (2+5+1 = 8); the Tibetan riots broke out on 14 March (1+4+3 = 8); the Sichuan earthquake occurred on 12 May (1+2+5 = 8). There’s that number again, only now it doesn’t seem nearly so favourable. But hang on; let’s not neglect the fact that the number 8 is divisible by 4, the Chinese number of death. And what year is it? It’s 2008, and 2 goes into 8 a total of 4 times. And so it continues…

Yes, some of these ‘links’ are tenuous to say the least, and this is all probably just a case of superstitious, over-emotional people with hyperactive imaginations and too much time on their hands reading too much into a set of mini-coincidences. Or on the other hand, it could be irrefutable proof of some higher purpose at work, because as tenuous as some of them may seem, the links are most definitely there.

Needless to say, I'm personally glad that only Fuwa (5 Dolls) was created, instead of LiuWa (6 Dolls). If not, the melanine milk scare would have definitely been attributed to the sixth mascot..