Triple-ninth weddings set new records in China

Sep 9, 2009, 10:50 GMT

   Beijing - Three lucky nines in the date spurred tens of thousands of Chinese couples to marry on Wednesday, setting new records at registry offices.

   'We planned to marry by the end of 2009, and '999' is a relatively good day in this period of time so we registered today,' Ren Fei, a bank employee in her 20s, told the German Press Agency dpa after registering her marriage in Beijing.

   Ren said she would hold a wedding party with some 500 guests at a later date but said she might not choose another auspicious date for the party.

   'I will consider the date for our major life events, but not all events,' she said.

   Beijing registered a new record of more than 10,000 marriages on Wednesday, including 4,000 in its Haidian district alone.

   The newlyweds aimed to draw good fortune from three nines of the ninth day of the ninth month of 2009.

   Many registry offices reported even higher totals than on August 8, 2008, when 314,224 weddings were registered as the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games added to the auspiciousness of the triple eight in that date.

   Shanghai's Pudong district registered more than 1,000 weddings, compared with 900 for last year's 'triple eight' peak.

   Couples began queuing at 3 am in some districts of Shanghai, while an office in the city's Huangpu district registered 50 couples in just 50 minutes early Wednesday morning, local media said.

   'We have deployed more staff to ensure smooth operation at registration sites,' Zhou Jixiang, head of Shanghai's marriage registration bureau, told the China Daily newspaper.

   Offices in Shanghai would continue to register couples until midnight so long as they arrived by 4 pm, the newspaper said.

   The southern city of Guangzhou, where residents are normally more superstitious than those in northern China's large cities, simplified procedures to ensure the completion of weddings within three minutes.

   But the Guangzhou couples were still required to state 'I am unmarried' and 'I want to get married voluntarily,' the local Yangcheng Evening News reported.

   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 earlier.

   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.

   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.

   The triple nines occur only at the start of each century, and are followed by another major auspicious sequence next year with three tens on October 10.