Thousands rush to get married or give birth on auspicious day
As tens of thousands of couples rushed to tie the knot on yesterday's lucky date, many others were celebrating the births of their 'Olympic babies', making maternity hospitals some of the busiest places on the mainland.
The supposedly auspicious eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the century witnessed a record number of marriage registrations, with at least 100,000 couples expected to make their unions official yesterday, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Authorities expected up to 30,000 couples to register in Beijing alone. All 18 registration offices in the city were open from the first tick until past midnight, to handle the crowds who applied online weeks ahead - and waited in a long queue to secure the earliest possible registration.
Other major cities also reported floods of people registering their marriages yesterday, including 6,000 couples in Shanghai, 3,600 in Guangzhou and 2,300 in Hangzhou - many times the usual rate. Many smaller cities, such as Hefei in Anhui province , Taiyuan in Shanxi , and Wenzhou in Zhejiang , organised group weddings.
To meet the extraordinary surge in demand, the Ministry of Civil Affairs had called on all its branches to 'allocate all the resources that can be harnessed to speed up the work flow, change work schedules and set up temporary registration offices', according to Xinhua.
And despite all the traffic restrictions in Beijing, and higher costs and other inconveniences caused by security checks everywhere, many couples still decided to have Olympic opening-day wedding receptions.
Shanghai fund manager Ge Min decided to have his wedding yesterday because 'having the same day for our wedding and the Olympics will symbolise double happiness for our family'. Ding Ming , a 28-year-old graphic designer, said he and his wife chose more than a year ago to get married on August 8 because it would be a very lucky, memorable and meaningful day for them. They booked their marriage online a month in advance.
Meanwhile, mothers all over the nation were doing what they could to have Olympic babies born exactly on the lucky day, with many pregnant women booking Caesarean sections to make sure.
While the exact number of Olympic babies was hard to determine yesterday, at the Beijing Haidian District Maternal and Child Health Hospital, 30 babies were born - 15 boys and 15 girls - from midnight to 1pm, and two were born by design at 8.08am. In Shanghai's No 1 Women's and Child Health Hospital, 16 mothers-to-be had Caesarean operations yesterday, according to obstetrician Qiu Jiamin . Dr Qiu said a number of others had changed their minds.
Dancing teacher Qian Shanshan , 25, gave birth to her 3kg baby by Caesarean section at 10.10am, two days before her due date. The girl was the hospital's second Olympic baby and was named Chen Yu - or 'sun and glory' in Chinese.
Additional reporting by Edwin Lee
