By any standards, today is a momentous day for China, and hundreds of thousands of people are determined to crown the occasion by getting married — or, with luck and good timing, by giving birth.

Not only is today the start of the 2008 Olympic Games, the biggest sporting event the nation has witnessed. It is also one of the most auspicious dates in the Chinese calendar — in Mandarin, the number eight rhymes with the first character of the phrase “to become rich”. Marriage registration offices and maternity units across the country are braced for what is expected to be the busiest day on record.

“The number eight is very lucky in China, so we decided to get married on the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008,” Liu Bin, 27, said as he and his bride sat in the Mona Lisa photography studio in Beijing admiring their wedding portraits, traditionally taken before the wedding. “It is also the opening ceremony of the Olympics,” he added. “It is a very special day.”

Mr Liu and his partner will be among 16,000 couples in Beijing alone getting married today. To cope with the demand, the head of the registry office of the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau, Li Ziwei, announced last week that the office would open at 6am and that the marriage process, which normally takes ten minutes, will be cut to 60 seconds.

But Mr Liu was unconcerned. “Friday is just receiving the official marriage papers,” he said. “It doesn't matter that it is so quick, or that our friends and family will be too busy watching the opening ceremony to celebrate with us. We will have a proper wedding in October.”

Down the road from the photography studio, Bian Xuming, the deputy head of Beijing Union Hospital's maternity unit, has seen a similar rush. “Lots of young parents would love to have their baby on August 8 and the first day of the Olympics. It is a very lucky day.” She added that August was busy every year, but this month scheduled births were up more than 20 per cent.

But she cautioned: “If people come in desperate to give birth on a certain day, we are not prepared to give unnecessary, elective Caesarean sections. The most important thing is the health of the baby, not the day it is born.”

Despite the warning, there have been reports of mothers going to extreme lengths to ensure that their child is a lucky Olympic baby.

One expectant mother called Mrs Zhang told a newspaper in the southern city of Guangzhou that her baby was due on Sunday. To speed things up, she has been spending her days running up and down the stairs to her 12th-floor apartment.

“Since I started exercising, my pelvic muscles have opened a bit, so maybe I can give birth a couple of days early,” she said.

“In any case, I will go to the hospital on August 8. I have heard there is an injection that induces labour.”

In some Chinese provinces, every available yuesao - a woman who cares for the mother and child after birth - has been booked for months. If there are any left, their rates have risen by 200 yuan (£15), or 10 per cent, a month.

For some couples, however, the hype of August 8 has become too much to bear.

“Our parents wish we could have the baby on Friday,” said Zhou Xin, a 29-year-old expectant father whose child is due tomorrow. “But our hospital is all booked up on that day. The doctor said he might be able to give us a bed in a corridor.

“The traffic conditions will be bad and the hospital staff won't be in a good mood because they are working instead of sitting on their sofa watching the opening ceremony.”

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