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Beijing restarts personal license plates

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-10-06 22:48

BEIJING - China's capital readopted a program on Monday allowing car owners to have personalized license plates, but clamping down on the flashy and crude picks such as "UFO", "SEX 001" and "FBI 007" produced by some people six years ago.

A car owner picks license plate numbers at the car registration center of the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau in Beijing, October 6, 2008. [Xinhua]

A Beijing resident became the city's luckiest car owner when he secured the plate reading "NV8888" at 8:30 a.m. Monday after queuing for three days with his family at a car registration center of the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau.

He was followed by another Beijinger, Du Fei, who got "NA9999."

Many Chinese have demonstrated their fervor over lucky numbers as usual, picking as many eights, sixes or nines as possible in their licence plates.

Eight in Chinese is pronounced in the same way as "fortune," six is associated with "smooth" or "propitious," while nine has the same sound as "eternity."

Chinese traditionally avoid the numbers three and four, which sound like "dissolve" and "die" respectively.

The seven car registration centers opened at 8:30 a.m., but at the registration headquarters in southern Beijing alone, at least 130 new cars had lined up along a police cordon that had been set up over the weekend. Many had waited for at least 48 hours. "I came here on Friday and my whole family took turns to wait here," said Du Fei at the head of the queue.

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