Your number's up!

Estate agent shop window

Among the superstitions in Chinese culture is the concept of auspicious or inauspicious numbers. In some Western countries, the 13th floor is omitted from some buildings. Here in Asia, superstition has meant that one often finds buildings in which floor numbers such as 4, 14, 24 are skipped for commercial appeal (because '4' is homophone of 'death'); following Western mores,13 is also often omitted for good measure.

In Hong Kong, where building floor numbers are only subject to fire regulations and not the building code, a most farcical manifestation was 39 Conduit Road, where 42 floors, including 14, 24, 34, 64, all floors between 40 and 59 were missing; the floor immediately above the "68th" is the "88th".

Relevant authorities say it is not common occurrence in Beijing, yet it seems that building regulators there are pre-emptively calling time on this practice from 1 September to prevent comical abuses as was witnessed in Hong Kong. In the words of an official with the Beijing Municipal Administration of Quality and Technology Supervision: 

"The numbers of storied buildings, units and door plates should be coded and registered in numerical order, and no skipping or selective use of numbers should be allowed,"

In its first real attempt to regulate the "self-regulated" property sector, the Hong Kong Government introduced the Residential Properties (First-hand Sales) Bill in March 2012, ostensibly to stop misleading sales and marketing practices. The bill mandates citation of "usable floor area" instead of "gross floor area" so as not to overstate floor areas, but it stops short of regulating floor numbers.