Thousands of Chinese couples to wed on lucky 999 day

Sep 8, 2009, 11:08 GMT

   Beijing - Thousands of Chinese couples planned to hold wedding ceremonies Wednesday, hoping to draw good fortune from the auspicious triple nine in the date, the ninth day of the ninth month of 2009, news reports said.

   The southern city of Guangzhou was braced to register its highest number of marriages since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949 with 6,106 couples hoping to tie the knot, state radio said Tuesday.

   Other major cities reported similar wedding peaks, and many upmarket hotels and restaurants were trying to cash in on the wedding boom with promotions for the triple 9th.

   About 5,000 couples reportedly planned to marry in Shanghai while many hotels and banqueting suites in the northern city of Tianjin were fully booked as at least 4,000 couples had organized weddings, local websites said.

   More than 1,000 couples wanted to register marriages on the 999 day in the north-western city of Xi'an, where the local government had extended the normal working hours of its registrars and increased the number of staff, the official Xinhua news agency said.

   The number nine in Chinese has the same pronunciation as another character meaning longevity, so traditional superstition dictates that a couple who marries on a date with three nines must have a long and happy life together.

   Thousands more couples planned to wed on October 1 when China celebrates its National Day and marks the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic founded by the ruling Communist Party.

   But the September 9 and October 1 wedding peaks seemed unlikely to surpass the record 314,224 weddings registered on October 8 last year when the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games added to auspiciousness of the triple eight in that date.