City bows to Asian numeric superstition

[The Straight Story]

City bows to Asian numeric superstition

AURORA, Ontario, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- A municipality north of Toronto is trying to accommodate Asian residents by letting them remove "unlucky" numbers from their street addresses.

The city council of Aurora, Ontario, voted this week to alter street addresses where possible to appease people from Eastern Asia who dislike the number four, the Toronto Star reported.

Marco Ramunno, the city's director of planning and development services, told the newspaper the number four "has a bad luck connotation for people from East Asia," and it was decided to allow renumbering of streets where there is a wide enough numbering gap.

The Star said in some Asian languages, the number four sounds like the word "death." The number 14 is also considered unlucky by Cantonese-speaking Chinese, the report said.

http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2009/10/16/City-bows-to-Asian-numeric-superstition/UPI-27691255697464/

[Bonobo]

1. "Shi" = "Death".

You aren't supposed to give flowers (or other things) in groups of 4 either.

Pretty much the same reason many of our hotels and buildings don't have a "13th" floor.

[GirlinContempt]

10. So true. 13th floor is left out often.

in my apartment building, there are no suites with the number 13 (I'm in 514, and it goes 511, 512, 514)

[wickerwoman]

14. I used to work in a westernized office building

in Shanghai. It didn't have a 4th, 13th, 14th or 24th floor and they used the British system so no ground floor either. At a certain point, you had no idea where you were (I counted once and we were actually on what would be the 13th floor in an American office building).

[sakabatou]

15. delete.

[Ozymanithrax]

2. Magical thinking is a plague upon our houses...

When do they start allowing people to move their houses in obeisance to the principals of Feng Shui.

[Critters2]

6. The entire town of Vedic City, Iowa is set up on the Indian version of

feng shui. No houses face west, as I recall, and other such rules.

[rucky]

8. Is that the place with the levitation dome?

[Critters2]

17. I think the dome is at Maharishi University, which is nearby. nt

[Johonny]

3. and many Americans won't live in the 13 th house

or have a 13th floor in their building...

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. If they believe that strongly that the address number is unlucky,

why did they move there in the first place?

Would any normal insane RW fundie move into a house with the street address of 666?

It would never be an issue because they wouldn't do it.

How will this fuck with municipal records when suddenly 414 Elm Street ceases to exist? It's been there since 1934 - then it just disappears. Computer records come up with 'No such address' because the computers are not smart enough to adjust to the change.

Dumb. Really, really dumb.

[Posteritatis]

9. Cities renumber addresses for any number of reasons; this isn't the dumbest one I've heard

My city renamed and renumbered a bunch of streets two years ago because, well, uh, er, we really don't have any idea, but the implication was that they wanted to fix some streets' bad reputations by potted-planting them off the map and calling them something else instead.

This one doesn't strike me as much dumber than the fact that a lot of buildings don't have thirteenth floors.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

5. 13 is a lucky number to the Chinese

The sound of the number when pronounced sounds close to the words "truly lively" or something similar, suggesting personal and financial growth. The number 8 is lucky because it sounds like a word for prosperity. I work in a Chinese law office in a large Chinese neighborhood near Los Angeles. When the telephone company created a new area code and ended the area code prefix 818 for some businesses, it caused quite an uproar among various merchants an commercial enterprises who thought it would change their luck for the worse.

[niyad]

7. does anybody here remember that ronnie boy got the city to change the address on his house in CA

when he left the white house?

[Fumesucker]

11. Beat me to it..

Exactly what I was thinking..

It was 666 St Cloud Rd I believe.

[niyad]

18. that was it

[jeffbr]

12. What century are we in?

Geez.

[DavidDvorkin]

13. How stupid.

[proteus_lives]

16. How Asinine.