Needle and thread in a loving mother's hands, mending holes of the clothes of her soon wandering son. Her sewing picks up the pace as the date approaches, worries of belated return echoing inside her heart [1]. It was a maternal love, the greatest existence of love in the world—the love that was like the highest peak of a mountain ridge.
The son did something wrong and came across the disaster of being imprisoned. Though Zhang Shi did not speak out her feelings, yet restlessness and worry resided inside her. Longing and anticipation that her son could soon be released from the prison to appear before her eyes. Half a year passed by with countless fantasies and countless prayers. When that dream had finally come true, her whole being trembled, feeling both excited and scared.
She was afraid that she was dreaming, and two lines of tears fell down.
Putong…
[1] It’s A Hymn of the Traveler Poem or Song of the Wanderer by Meng Jiao (751-814)
[2] 6666 and 8888 are among the lucky numbers for the Chinese, which are 2, 6, 8, and 9.
2 being pronounced ‘er’ is considered lucky because ‘all good things come in pairs’ and is an important number in the theory of Feng Shui.
6, being pronounced as ‘Liu’, sounds like a word in Mandarin that means ‘flowing, smooth, or frictionless’, especially where it occurs in multiples. Number 6 in Feng Shui represents authority and power.
8, is considered extremely lucky, as it’s pronounced in Mandarin that’s close to that of the phrase meaning ‘to make a fortune’. It’s also uniquely symmetric and when laid on its side, resembles the Greek symbol for infinity. The Olympic Games held in China in 2008 was officially began on the eighth of August (08/08/08), at precisely 8 minutes and 8 seconds past 8 PM, local Beijing time!
9, is considered especially propitious, partly due to the fact that the pronunciation of ‘nine’ is close to that of the word ‘long lasting’. 9 is the highest number in Feng Shui’s number scale and represents ‘the ultimate masculinity’ to symbolize the supreme sovereignty of the emperor. Often was number 9 or some multiple 9s used in imperial architectural designs back in the past.