中國網址中隱含的祕密信息

An American friend living in Beijing oncesaid she refused to communicate with anyone whose email address consisted of astring of numbers, such as . 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國女性朋友說過她拒絕接收任何帶數字的電子郵箱地址，(url=mailto:比如)比如(/ur)。當時我也是這麼認爲的——爲什麼要把電子郵箱地址搞得和電話號碼一樣難記呢？但是我很快就意識到如果不接受中國人的這種習慣，那麼你根本無法與任何中國人交流。

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 or, if thattakes too long to type, . Check out to seeone of China’s first and largest online gaming websites. Buy and sell used carsat . Want to purchase train tickets? It’s as easy as .

在美國，你只需記住兩串長號碼，分別是你自己的電話號碼以及你的社保號碼。在中國，你需要記住的數字號碼真是太多了：QQ號碼（QQ是中國最著名的聊天工具），電子郵箱號碼，甚至是網站網址。舉個例子，京東的網址是，或者如果你覺得太長的話，直接輸入就可以。4399是中國首個也是最大的在線遊戲網站。是二手車買賣網站。想購買火車票嗎，那就直接輸入。

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 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) most Chinese are more familiar with numbers than letters, especially thosewho didn’t go to college. To many, "" might as well beCyrillic.

爲什麼中國更喜歡數字，而不是字母呢？這與記憶相關。對於英語爲母語者的人來說，記住一長串的數字比記住一個單詞要難得多。當然，首先你要對這個單詞熟悉。而對於許多中國人來說，記住數字比記住拉丁字母要容易。當然，中國的小孩使用羅馬字母的拼音來學習漢語單詞（比如，中文中的“網絡”，拼音就是wangluo）。當然，阿拉伯數字（1，2，3）和羅馬字母一樣也是舶來品。但是大多數中國人更熟悉阿拉伯數字而非羅馬字母，特別是那些沒接受過高等教育的中國人。對於許多中國人來說，就如同斯拉夫字母一樣難懂。

The digits in a domain name usually aren'trandom. The Internet company NetEase uses the web address —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, d , respectively.

網址中的數字通常來說並不是隨機挑選的。網易的網址是，這可以追溯到以前的中國網民上網時都得先撥163才能連上網絡。而中國移動和中國聯通乾脆用自己的熱線電話來做網址， 和 。

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 ,pronounced "yow-leeyoh-ba-ba"—close enough! Those digits can just as often haveindividual meanings. The videosharing site 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 sounds alot like “I want a job.” Likewise, to order McDonald's delivery online, just goto , 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.”)

數字的另外一個好處是可以用來做同音異形異意字。比如阿里巴巴，其網站就是，在音調上非常相似。還有視頻分享網站，其中的6發音相當於流量的“流”。5就是我，1就是幺，還可以是“要”的意思。所以求職網站聽起來就像“我要工作”。還有麥當勞的訂餐熱線，，517讀起來就像“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"umbers 5201314, for example, mean 我愛你一生一世,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.

這種數字語言在中國網民中的應用可以說是屢試不爽（1就是要，2就是愛，4就是死或者世或者是，5就是我，7就是妻子或者吃，8就是發或者罷了，9就是長久或者酒精。比如5201314，就是我愛你一生一世；0748就是你去死吧；687是對不起的意思。中國還存在其他一些數字俚語，比如250代表白癡，38代表三八，4是最少使用的。2003年，中國一航空公司花重金28萬美元買下88888888這個電話號碼。

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.

爲什麼中國網址中不直接使用漢語呢？因爲這對中國人來說簡直是一種痛。爲全球網站地址設置規則的是互聯網名稱與數字地址分配機構，該機構定期的進行域名擴張，以涵蓋更多的非拉丁文本，但是中國的網站並不能充分的享受到這種好處。一些設備需要特殊的插件才能輸入中文的網址，即使能夠輸入中文，其速度也比直接輸入數字來得慢。此外，如果某些網站想打入國際市場，那麼就不宜使用中文，所以數字就是個很好的選擇。

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 "" 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，數字與字母的分別實在是因特網固有偏見的象徵：即使因特網誕生20多年後的今天，其本質上依然是美國的系統（蒂姆·伯納斯-李乃互聯網發明者）。雖然美國同意在2015年將該機構交給一家全球多方利益相關組織管理，但互聯網名稱與數字地址分配機構依然是美國的一家非營利性公司。長期以來大多數網頁上所使用的都是美國信息交換標準碼——一種字符編碼方案。2012年，美國拒絕簽署一項受俄羅斯和中國支持的國際通訊協議，該協議的目的是使互聯網擺脫以美國爲中心的管理架構。換句說話，目前的互聯網結構總會讓人想起美國的數字霸權，從WiFi標準到GPS。甚至中國網址末尾中的都是“中國”的英文縮寫，而非中文。所以難怪其他國家會用0748來罵美國250們。