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Learn Chinese Inauspicious Numbers
While learning Chinese, you need to be aware of the taboos of Chinese people, or else you may offend your Chinese friends unintentionally when you get along with them. The use of number in China is fairly particular, it is necessary to have a general idea of the unlucky numbers in China.
In your Chinese learning, you may have found that Number 4 (四sì) is nearly homophonous to the word "death" (死sǐ). Due to that, many numbered product lines skip the "4": e.g. Nokia cell phones (there is no series beginning with a 4). In East Asia, some buildings do not have a 4th floor. 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 only 35 physical floors.
Although five (五wǔ,) can represent "me" (吾wú) in Mandarin, it is usually associated with "not" (無wú). If used for the negative connotation it can become good by using it with a negative. 54 means "not die" or "no death". If used for the positive it can be used as a possessive. 528 is a way of saying "no easy fortune for me". 53 sounds like "m4 sang1 (唔生)" – "not live" in Cantonese.
In a Chinese lesson, you may wonder why number seven seldom appears. Because seven is considered spiritist or ghostly in China. The seventh month of the Chinese calendar is also called the "Ghost Month". See Ghost Festival for more detail. During the month, the gates of hell are said to be open so ghosts and spirits are permitted to visit the living realm. However, the Chinese lunar calendar also has the 7th day of the month as Chinese Valentine's Day (七夕qi xi), so the number 7 is not generally associated with bad luck. In most of the regions in China number 7 remains neutral or associated with luck.
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