It is already a week past and I finally write about it.

 

In Hong Kong, the Chinese name of Halloween is 萬聖節, literally "10,000 Saints Festival". It is a reasonable translation of All Saints Day, because in Chinese 10,000 typically means uncountably many. In English, you have one, ten hundred, thousand, and then jump to a million (which is a thousand thousand). In Chinese, you have the extra step 萬 10,000 after 千 1,000, before jumping to 億 100,000,000 (ie 10,000 * 10,000). However, the 1000 and 10,000 are common words that appear in many Chinese sayings and quotations. The Chinese word 億 100,000,000 is hardly ever used other than in a scientific context in the recent centuries (or to describe the billionairs).

 

I think British English and American English have different meanings for a billion - British take it as a million million while Americans a thousand million. In Chinese, there is another word beyond 100,000,000, which is 兆. I wonder if people really know how big that number 兆 is. I just looked up a dictionary, which says 兆 means 10,000 * 100,000,000 (ie 10,000 ** 3, similar to the American logic).

 

The Chinese name for Halloween also implies that we have confused the 31/10 with the 1/11. And we don't have any name for the real All Saints Day.

 

And Halloween always reminds me of a riddle from a short Asimov story. In the story, a character said in an excited voice "In a way, Halloween is exactly the same as Christmas." The secret police was looking for a mathematics geek and ruled the character off as a possible suspect. It was decades later that somebody else figured out what the sentence actually mean. So for a mathematician, in what way is Halloween exactly the same as Christmas?

 

Halloween is one of the few Pagan festivals that have survived the religious prosecution. Yes, I am with the Pagans right now. In the past months I've been writing the walk through for Blood Trail and is approaching the finish line.