In Chinese eyes there can be few things more auspicious than giving birth to not one, but two babies on the day the Olympic Games open. It could even seem slightly unfair that British teachers Maxine and Cal Telfer, who already have two children, thought so much of the Games that, had she not fallen pregnant with twins and been scheduled to have them born by Caesarian section on August 8 this year, they would have left the country for a holiday overseas during the Games.
Where are you from?
Cal: Maxine's from the West Midlands, I'm sort of from Edinburgh and Newcastle.
How long have you lived in Beijing and what do you do?
Cal: Since 2002. We are teachers at Dulwich College. Most of the children we teach are the children of diplomats and so on, so we don't really get a feel in our daily lives for how important the Olympics are to the Chinese.
What do the Beijing Games mean to you?
Maxine: Spain. Well, that's what they would have meant if I hadn't found I was pregnant. We're not interested in the Olympics at all. I don't even like sport, so we were going to go on holiday in Spain, and rent our house out. All our friends were joining the lottery, trying to get tickets, talking about it - we didn't even bother.