Rings: Chinese Rush To Mark Auspicious 8/8/08

The opening of the Olympic Games on Friday night, on a date considered auspicious in Chinese tradition, 8/8/08, is sending some Chinese scrambling to the marriage bureau, while others are planning trips to the maternity ward. In an unusual surge, about 16,400 couples registered to get married in Beijing on Friday, the Beijing Evening News reported. The paper reminded newlyweds that they will not be permitted to use special highway lanes set up exclusively for Olympic traffic. Meanwhile, the Chengdu Hospital for Obstetrics and Gynecology in Sichuan Province imposed a firm cap of 15 on the number of scheduled cesarean sections it will perform for couples eager to have their child born on the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year. Last year, the simple day-month combination helped produce 53 babies at the hospital, 37 of which were delivered via C-section, according to the Chengdu Evening News. “I couldn’t barely stand after work that day,” the hospital’s director of obstetrics, Cheng Hong, told the paper. “A lot of couples called to ask if it’s possible to have cesarean section at 8 a.m. on the Olympic opening day, hoping to have an Olympic baby,” a nurse, Zhai Jia, said. In Mandarin Chinese, the sound for the number eight sounds much like a word meaning riches or prosperity.