The last day I was in China, I took all of the workers on Art Farm to the Happy Forest Restaurant. On 23 nov 2005 we were directed to room nr 4.
In Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese, the pronounciation (su'e) of the number '4' sounds almost exactly as the word 'death'. This leads to people not wanting to travel on the 4th of the month, don't want a license plate with a 4 in it or don't want to live on the 4th floor. Statistically more Chinese die of a heart-attack on the 4th of every month (about 7% compared to other days of the week), although this could be a result of the stress caused by the belief of 4 being related to death. This kind of monthly peak in deaths is not happening anywhere else, not even on the 13th in Western societies.
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