{"id":6281,"date":"2019-11-10T23:31:32","date_gmt":"2019-11-10T23:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/chinese-culture\/zhong-guo-shu-zi-four-si\/"},"modified":"2019-11-10T23:31:32","modified_gmt":"2019-11-10T23:31:32","slug":"zhong-guo-shu-zi-four-si","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/mm\/zhong-guo-shu-zi-four-si\/","title":{"rendered":"\u4e2d\u56fd\u6570\u5b57 Four\u56db"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The number 4 is omitted in some Chinese buildings.<\/p>\n

Number <\/span>4<\/strong> <\/span>(\u56db\/\u8086; sì) is co<\/em>nsidered an unlucky number in Chinese because it is nearly homopho<\/em>nous to the word <\/span>"death"<\/strong> <\/span>(\u6b7bs\u01d0). Due to that, many numbered product lines skip the "4": e.g., Nokia cell pho<\/em>nes (before the Lumia 640, there is no series co<\/em>ntaining a 4 in the name),  Palm PDAs, Canon PowerShot G’s series (after G3 goes G5), etc. In East Asia, some buildings do not have a 4th floor. (Compare with the Western practice of some buildings not having a 13th floor because 13 is co<\/em>nsidered unlucky.)<\/p>\n

In Hong Kong, some high-rise residential buildings omit all floor numbers with "4", e.g., 4, 14, 24, 34 and all 40–49 floors, in addition to not having a 13th floor. As a result, a building whose highest floor is number 50 may actually have o<\/em>nly 35 physical floors. Singaporean public transport operator SBS Transit has omitted the number plates for some of its buses whose numbers end with ‘4’ due to this, so if a bus is registered as SBS***3*, SBS***4* will be omitted and the next bus to be registered will be SBS***5*. Note that this o<\/em>nly applies to certain buses and not others and that the final asterisk is a checksum letter and not a number. Another Singaporean public transport operator SMRT has omitted the ‘4’ as the first digit of the serial number of the train cars as well as the SMRT BusesNightRider services.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n