And yet, less than half a day passed before a bevy of suited men arrived, draped a black cloth over the bird and removed it from its perch, according to reports.

The apparent problem? The black swan was situated across from the China Securities Regulatory Commission, which oversees the country's markets and trading.

It was taken away because some superstitious investors were worried the swan would spark bad luck, according to the South China Morning Post.

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Markets have been known to become jittery because of a number of factors, although of course there is no evidence that a statue would have any significant effect on trading. In the financial world, however, a “black swan event” refers to an episode that is difficult to predict and yet has catastrophic consequences, such as the 2001 dot-com bubble burst or the 2008 housing market crash.

By that logic, it may be understandable if Beijing investors didn't want to take chances with such a literal symbol nearby — the local equivalent of a giant statue of a black cat sitting under a ladder on Wall Street.

It isn't the first time that a large decorative object has been removed from Beijing's financial district because of superstitions, according to the BBC.

In honor of Children's Day on June 1, two statues of characters from the Chinese children's cartoon “Boonie Bears” were put up in front of the same shopping center. However, both statues were removed after someone from the CSRC complained that one bear appeared to be holding up its middle finger to the government building, according to the BBC.

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Zhu Lei, who oversaw the bear statues, told Beijing Youth Daily then that it was not the statues' intent to give investors the bird, as it were, since “a bear only has four fingers, it would not give a middle finger.”

Still, there was the additional problem of the bears' potential symbolism in the financial world. A “bear market” refers to one in which stock prices are falling, so the “Boonie Bears” were hardly welcomed by Beijing investors like the “Charging Bull” statue on Wall Street — or, for that matter, the cold black “Bankers Heart” statue that graces the San Francisco plaza named for the Bank of America founder.

The bear statues were replaced with cartoon monkeys and relegated to a storage room, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

It is unclear what happened to the black swan statue on Monday.

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Chinese superstitions have long influenced business and cultural practices, whether directly or indirectly. In China, the number eight is considered lucky because it sounds like the word for “prosperity.” Similarly, the number four is considered unlucky because it sounds like the word for “death.” Many high-rise buildings in China skip labeling the fourth floor, in the same way that some elevators in the United States omit labels for the “unlucky” 13th floor.

In early 2014, Chinese couples rushed to get pregnant so they could avoid giving birth to a baby in 2015, the Year of the Sheep. Those born in that zodiac year were thought to take on the characteristics of a sheep: meek and prone to become followers, rather than leaders.