a Chinese lesson

My 3 young boys, including the 2-year-old are learning how to write Chinese characters at a tuition center. I look at their lesson material- one of the characters they learned is a king. This Chinese word was composed of a symbol that looked like a prayer hand, accompanied by a number 1 line. I'm thinking 'this makes sense, because a king needs a prayer.'

I write the character for king and it was wrong because the prayer hand was too literal-looking. Then my husband, who is of Chinese descent, taught me how to write it properly - the prayer hand was supposed to be abstract-looking. I got agitated by his correction. He went on to teach me and the kids, in a very nice and excited way, that this character carries a numerical value of 27. And if not specified, Chinese people will assume that this character means November 27. If you want it to mean December 27, which is the case in this situation, then you would have to write Dec or "10th month" under the character.