“Four” is Unlucky Number for this Medical Student

Chinese student died of heart attack as he looked at ‘sexy magazine’ at sperm bank | Mail Online.

23 year old medical student, Zheng Gang, died of a heart attack during “his fourth visit in just over a week“, at the Wuhan University fertility clinic, says the Daily Mail.

“Four” is an unlucky number in much of Asia.  Its pronunciation is a homophone for the word for “death” in various languages and dialects.

The tragic demise of Zheng Gang, and subsequent law suit filed by his family, provide more incentive to use a substitute syllable when speaking of that number.