I just read an article in The New Republic that solved an enduring mystery for me – why so many Chinese websites and email addresses are identified with numbers instead of letters.

In China, it’s common to see email addresses such as [email protected] and URLs like 163.com. Users of QQ, the most popular instant message service, get a string of numbers as their ID instead of choosing a name.

According to the magazine story, the Chinese prefer numbers because it’s confusing for them to use the English alphabet that has become the international standard for website and email addresses.

Though Chinese students are taught English in school, most have only a rudimentary knowledge of the language. So even though there is a phonetic system (pinyin) for spelling Mandarin words with English letters, it’s easier for Chinese people to recognize numerals.

Thus, you can buy a car at 92.com, shop online at 3.cn and play games at 4399.com.

This can be troublesome for people like me who sometimes can’t remember their own phone number. Personally, I’d like to see all email and web addresses magically pop up on my computer by just thinking about them.