It's hard to keep up with Chinese slang when you're living "abroad", so I get excited when I run across pieces like John's (IM?) conversation with jennifer. At the very end, John says this:

潘吉 说：我要下班！

潘吉 说：８８

John said: I'm off work.

John said: 88

At first I was confused: what does "88" mean? My guess was that the key is to say it phonetically, "ba ba", which sounds like "bai bai", or "bye bye".

In fact, a Google search shows that such phonetic plays-on-words are very popular in Chinese, no doubt due to the new cellphone culture. A few good examples:

88 = bye bye,白白，拜拜，再見。

"ba ba" = "bai bai", goodbye

9494 = 就是就是。

"jiu su jiu si" = "jiu shi jiu shi", sure sure (but not in the sarcastic sense).

04551 = 你是我唯一

"ling si wu wu yi" = "ni shi wo wei yi", you're the only one for me.

Some of these number puns show the influence of other languages:

4人民 = 為人民。4為for.

this is a play on the english "four" = "for", because 為 (wei) means "for"

+U = 加油。

"+ U" = "jia you", another play on the English "U" sounding (or reading) like "you".

39 = Thank you

Knowing that 9 is "kyuu" in Japanese, "san kyuu" = Thank you.

⋯⋯ing 　 表示進行時。

...ing, means the transitive tense, and is a cross-over from English.

⋯⋯的說 　來自日語語法“⋯⋯と����ます”，表示認為、覺得。

...的說 is from the Japanese "...と����ます", and shows that the preceding is an opinion, or a supposition.