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'Unlucky' cabs banned from carrying examinees
A Shanghai taxi company has banned cabs with unlucky license plates from carrying students to sit the National College Entrance Examinations (NCEE) this week. Dazhong, the city's largest taxi company, won't carry students in cabs with license plates ending in the number four, pronounced in the Shanghai dialect the same as the word "lose." Many Chinese avoid four because it is pronounced the same as "death" in widely spoken Mandarin. "Lots of parents refuse to take cabs with number plates which they consider unlucky," the Shanghai Youth Daily on Monday quoted Dazhong's taxi boss Zhao Leping as saying. "We've seen many of them get angry at us because we have used them to carry their children in past years," Zhao said. Zhao said the company received a lot of complaints over license plate numbers on the first day of the NCEE last July. Many parents were furious when seeing taxis they had booked to take their children to the exam venues were with license plates that ended with numbers four or six. The number of six also unluckily has similar pronunciation with the word "fall" in Shanghai dialect, which was seen to bring bad luck to the exam takers. About 130,000 students will take the crucial three-day NCEE starting Tuesday,
and 20,000 cabs have been booked to deliver them to the test venues on time.
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