Pair shaped

Huge inflatable twins in traditional Hani costume are bobbing in the breeze outside the Twins' Hotel. Folk music blasts down streets, through markets and across every public place. Outside the China Tobacco Building, a doll has unceremoniously deflated and lies face down on the ground.

It's the day before the Twins' Festival and Mojiang, Yunnan province, has pulled out all the stops.

Stages, bazaars and food stalls appear out of nowhere. More than 1,000 sets of twins, 137,000 tourists and media hordes have descended on the little southern Chinese city.

There are festivals for twins all over the world, from the huge gathering in Twinsburg, Ohio, in the United States, to the less celebratory Twinless Twins Convention in Florida. But the mainland has more reason than most to mark the marvel of twins. To legally have two children under a one-child policy is a blessing and something many couples dream about.

Mojiang county has been extra blessed. The world average for conceiving identical twins is about three in 1,000 births; in Mojiang, that figure is four in 1,000. And in the village of Hexi, the 100 resident families count a staggering 10 sets of identical twins among them.

The county has more than 1,500 identical twins and triplets in a population of only 380,000. This may not qualify as a scientific marvel but it is enough of an anomaly for the people of Mojiang to believe there's something in the water.

'It is the water,' insists Huang Fengqi, a resident of Hexi and mother of 13-year-old identical twin girls. 'I wanted twins and I drank the water like everybody in Hexi. We've always had a lot of twins in the village but there have been more people coming to drink the twin water in the past eight years.'