Chinese Homophones and Lucky Numbers: Why Taiwan Skips the 4th Floor

Ride an elevator in an older Taipei apartment building and you may notice the buttons skip from 3 to 3A, or from 3 straight to 5. Ask a Taiwanese friend why, and you’ll get the same answer every time: 四跟死很像 — “four sounds like death.” This isn’t a folk tale learners can file away as trivia. It’s your first real encounter with 諧音 (xiéyīn), homophones and near-homophones, and once you understand how the system works, you’ll notice it everywhere — in apartment listings, wedding envelopes, and the fruit stacked at a 夜市 stall during Lunar New Year.

What 諧音 Actually Means

Mandarin has a small number of syllables and a large number of characters, so many words that mean completely different things sound identical or nearly identical. Where English treats a coincidental sound-alike as a pun, Mandarin-speaking culture in Taiwan often treats it as a meaningful link — lucky if the association is positive, taboo if it isn’t.

The clearest example: 四 (sì, “four”) and 死 (sǐ, “to die”). The tones differ — fourth tone versus third — but the syllable is close enough that four has carried a death association for centuries. Compare that to 九 (jiǔ, “nine”), an exact homophone of 久 (jiǔ, “long-lasting”), which is why nine shows up constantly in wishes for long relationships, long health, and long careers.

This is also a useful lesson in why tones matter. 死 and 四 are not identical — they differ only by tone — but that’s exactly the point: get the tone wrong on a similar-sounding pair and you risk saying something you didn’t mean. If tone pairs like this trip you up in conversation, our guide to Mandarin tone sandhi and the tones section cover the mechanics in more depth.

Numbers: Lucky, Unlucky, and Everything Marked Up or Down

Number	Character	Sounds Like	Association
4	四 (sì)	死 (sǐ) — to die	Unlucky
6	六 (liù)	—	Smooth, from the idiom 六六大順 (liùliù dàshùn, “may everything go smoothly”)
8	八 (bā)	發 (fā) — to prosper	Lucky (originally a Cantonese sound-alike, baat/faat, but the belief is now nationwide, including in Taiwan)
9	九 (jiǔ)	久 (jiǔ) — long-lasting	Lucky, especially for relationships and health
2	二 (èr)	—	Neutral-to-lucky, from 好事成雙 (“good things come in pairs”)

You’ll see this priced into daily life, not just discussed. Phone numbers and license plates with strings of 8s and 9s sell at a premium; numbers with repeated 4s sell at a discount. Some apartment listings near NTNU quietly note a unit is on a “lucky” floor as a selling point. None of this is enforced by law or even fully believed by every Taiwanese person you’ll meet — it functions more like walking under a ladder in English-speaking countries: most people know the rule, some actively follow it, and almost everyone at least jokes about it.

Where the 4th Floor Actually Goes

In many Taiwanese buildings — hospitals and elder-care facilities especially — floor 4 is renamed 3A, skipped entirely so the building jumps from 3 to 5, or the elevator button is simply left unlabeled. This isn’t universal; plenty of newer buildings number floors normally, and younger residents are less likely to think twice about it. But if you’re apartment hunting near your language school, don’t be surprised to find a building with no fourth floor, or a listing that mentions the unit’s floor number a little too proudly. Hospitals frequently extend the avoidance further, skipping entire wings or room numbers ending in 4 — worth knowing before you’re confused in a waiting room.

Gifts to Avoid — and What to Bring Instead

Homophone logic gets most concrete around gift-giving, where a well-meant present can land badly if you don’t know the sound-alike behind it.

Gift	Sounds Like / Means	Why It’s Avoided	Better Choice
Clock (鐘, zhōng)	送終 (sòngzhōng) — to attend someone’s deathbed	”Giving a clock” (送鐘) is an exact homophone for this phrase	A watch is fine if framed as personal, not ceremonial
Pear (梨, lí)	離 (lí) — to separate	Sharing or splitting a pear implies splitting up	Any other fruit — apples (平安, “peace”) are a safe default
Umbrella (傘, sǎn)	散 (sàn) — to scatter, break up	Especially avoided as a gift between couples	Buy your own umbrella instead of receiving one
Shoes (鞋, xié)	Symbolizes the recipient “walking away” from you	Common belief, especially for romantic partners	Fine if the recipient pays you a token NT$1–10 in return, which nullifies the meaning
Handkerchief	Associated with wiping tears at a funeral	Reads as wishing someone future grief	Tea, fruit baskets, or a red envelope

You don’t need to memorize this list to survive in Taiwan — most Taiwanese friends will forgive a foreigner’s gift-giving mistakes without comment. But knowing the logic behind the taboo, rather than just the taboo itself, is what turns this from trivia into something you can extend on your own the next time you hear an unfamiliar pair.

Red Envelopes: Where the Rules Get Formal

Nowhere does 諧音 get more explicit than 紅包 (hóngbāo), the red envelopes used for weddings, Lunar New Year, and other formal occasions. Two conventions show up consistently in Taiwan:

• Avoid multiples of four. NT$400, NT$4,000, and similar amounts are avoided outright. Amounts built around 6, 8, or 9 — NT$600, NT$1,200, NT$3,600, NT$6,600 — are considered safe and auspicious.
• Odd totals for happy occasions, even totals for funerals. Wedding 紅包 are typically given in amounts that don’t split evenly (implying the couple won’t split either), while funeral condolence money (奠儀) conventionally uses even amounts. Conventions vary by family and region, so when in doubt, ask a Taiwanese friend before an event — nobody will think less of you for checking.

If you’re studying under the Dangdai curriculum, this is the cultural payoff of the numbers and measure-word vocabulary from Book 1 — the same digits you drilled for prices and dates carry a second layer of meaning the textbook doesn’t mention.

Why This Is Worth Learning, Not Just Knowing

Homophone taboos aren’t a side quest from real Mandarin — they’re a compressed lesson in exactly the skill that separates intermediate learners from advanced ones: hearing the difference between words that sound almost identical and knowing which one a native speaker means from context and tone. The same instinct that tells a Taiwanese host not to give you a clock is the instinct you’re building every time you distinguish 買 (mǎi, to buy) from 賣 (mài, to sell), or 四 from 死. It also connects directly to 成語 (chengyu) — idioms like 六六大順 are themselves built on this same number symbolism, which our guide to learning chengyu efficiently covers in more depth.

Zhong Chinese’s flashcard decks include audio for exactly these kinds of near-homophone pairs, so you build the habit of listening for tone rather than guessing from the first syllable you recognize.

Related Reading

• 成語 (Chengyu): How to Learn Chinese Idioms Without Wasting Time
• Mandarin Tone Sandhi: Why 一, 不, and Third Tones Change in Connected Speech
• Chinese Family Terms: A Complete Guide to Kinship Vocabulary (稱謂)
• Where to Live in Taipei as a Language Student