Yesterday's marriage total: 19,000 couples
September 10, 2009 | Posted by Chris
Seeking to seize an especially auspicious date on the calendar, 19,000 couples exchanged wedding vows yesterday in Beijing, the New York Times reports. The reason for the excitement, as discussed in yesterday's post, is that the date 9/9/09 has strong connotations of "eternal" or "infinite," because 9 in Chinese is pronounced exactly the same as the word expressing those meanings. For couples already in the midst of planning weddings, the date's overtone of perpetual marital happiness was too good to let pass. The last great auspicious date on the calendar was August 8 of last year -- 8/8/08 -- because the word for 8 sounds similar to an expression for getting rich; on that date last year, about 16,000 couples were married in Beijing.
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