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Beijing reopened a scheme yesterday allowing car owners to personalize their license plates, but clamped down on flashy and crude picks such as "UFO", "SEX 001" and "FBI 007". A Beijing resident became the city's luckiest car owner when he secured a plate reading "NV8888" at 8:30am, 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, whose new plate read "NA9999." Many Chinese have, as usual, demonstrated their fervor over lucky numbers, 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...

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