During the 2024 Lunar New Year holiday, customers queued outside a lottery shop in New Taipei City to buy scratch cards. A 30-year-old man in the line noticed a NT$2,000 ticket that the shop cat had held with a paw or sat upon. Other customers had avoided it because its serial number ended in four, a number whose sound is associated with death. That ticket won NT$1 million.
Buying lottery and scratch tickets has become a Lunar New Year activity for many Taiwanese families. Taiwan's Public Welfare Lottery also connects chance to policy: proceeds support social welfare, while the retail network is designed to create work for disadvantaged people, including disabled people, Indigenous people and single-parent families. At the shopfront, seasonal custom, personal luck and a welfare system meet in one line.
What makes this queue memorable is the ticket that looked as if a cat had reserved it after other customers rejected its number. While waiting their turn, buyers choose not only by probability but also through stories and ideas about luck.