Last week I finally found people who wanted to rent my apartment. They are a youngish couple from Hong Kong, and when I first met the wife and listened to her verbally stagger through basic Mandarin, I asked if she wanted to speak English instead, an offer which she appreciatively accepted.

We went over her list of requests: paint the blue wall a pinkish color, dry clean the curtains, install heat lamps in the bathrooms. I was able to push back on getting her a new mattress and she also agreed to not have me provide the fa piaos for expense purposes (a great win for me). When it appeared we had reached a near-settlement, I leaned back in my chair and started digging into the details.

“I plan on leaving my land-line here for you guys to use. Or, did you want to switch your phone number over here?”

She didn’t pause long. “Is it a lucky phone number?”

I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, until I realized that she was asking if my phone number consisted of “lucky” digits. I remembered learning that a lot of people from Hong Kong were deeply superstitious; fearful of the number “4″ and prone to making major real estate decisions based on feng shui.

Two days later, she brought her husband over to sign the contract. I lightheartedly joked about my phone number, saying that it must be lucky because it doesn’t have any 4’s and has a couple of consecutive 8’s. He told me that it’s not that easy, every combination is different for every person.

He pointed around our apartment. “We brought in a feng shui master who said this place has good feng shui for us, but that might not be the case for you.”

I stared at him blankly. These guys were seriously hardcore about this shit. I wanted to say something mocking-like, but I figured I should maintain some good relations with these strange people that wanted to do away with my beautiful blue living room wall and had decided upon my apartment based on some mystical hocus pocus. It also helped that the husband was offering me bottles of MacCallan 12 and Absolut for 50% off.

Two days later, I got a call from their agent. She told me that they had consulted the feng shui master again, who told them that if they moved in two days earlier than the date upon which we had agreed, then they would have even more luck. Would I be willing to accept an extra 1000 RMB for them to move in 2 days earlier?

Duh, of course. Maybe the apartment’s feng shui is good for me, too. I will definitely miss the hell out of that place.