Very Superstitious

I noticed today that, like many buildings in eastern China, my building does not have a single floor that contains the number 4. No 4th floor, no 14th floor, no 24th floor. This is because the word for "4" is very similar to the word for "death" in multiple Chinese dialects. Thanks to a little Wikipedia research, I learned that the number 14 is even worse than the number 4, because the word for 14 in Cantonese sounds like "certainly die." I also learned that buildings in Hong Kong, in addition to skipping floor numbers that end in 4, also skip the entire series of 40th floors, so no floor 41, 42, 43, etc. Our building also doesn't have a 13th floor -- a common Western superstition -- which I think is a nice illustration of the "East meets West" culture of the city.

Tom's and my flat is on floor 9, which happens to be the luckiest single digit number in Chinese (hey, if I'm going to follow the bad superstitions, I might as well follow the good!). The number 9 sounds like "long-lasting" in Chinese, and therefore it is used a lot as symbolism in connection with weddings. Since a healthy portion of the conversations that occur in this flat have to do with wedding planning, I think that's a good sign! Perhaps even more interestingly (to some of you), the number 9 has a very similar pronunciation to a vulgar Cantonese word for male genitalia, and the people of HK make lots of plays on words to reference that. I'll leave it to readers to determine whether our living on the [penis] floor is good or bad luck ;-).

Tom and I start our informal (i.e. Rosetta Stone) Putonghua (i.e. Mandarin) lessons this week. But researching unlucky numbers has reminded me that it would be useful to know a little Cantonese, so I don't try to give someone my address and end up saying something completely inappropriate!