Not something I’d heard of before, but on Chinese sites there’s a story about a Tang emperor who won a dice game by calling double fours, and was so happy he won he had all the fours on all the dice painted red. Then other people kept doing it to please him. I’m not saying it makes sense but that’s the story. Also no explanation of the ones…
Chinese wikipedia apparently cites an actual source for the dating of this to the Tang dynasty though, I’m kind of curious now and will probably look into it while procrastinating tomorrow lol