Superstition means fewer babies in Year of the Sheep(2)

Social impact

Leading by this superstitious social trend, tens of thousands of mothers across China are keen to have a child in the auspicious Year of the Horse, rather than in the "unlucky" Year of the Sheep that will start on Feb 19, 2015.

As a result, hospitals, especially in metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai, reported wild overcrowding with pregnant women, making it extremely difficult for them to find a place to give birth.

The number of babies born so far in 2014 has increased nearly 30 percent compared to the same period in 2013, Ba Hua, professor of obstetrics and gynecology with People's Hospital of Liaoning province, told Liaoning Daily.

Weihai Evening News had a similar report that, through October of this year, more than 240 babies were born each month at People's Hospital in Rongcheng city, which is double the number of that in 2013, overworking the medical staff.

Lanzhou is going to embrace a baby boom at the end of 2014, but the wards have already been overcrowded of pregnant women, Lanzhou Morning Post reported.

Journalist from Qi Lu Evening News surveyed a random sampling recently at Maternal and Child Health Hospital and Mining Bureau Hospital in Zaozhuang city of East China's Shangdong province. It showed that 18 out of 25 expectant mothers would like to have their child by cesarean delivery before the arrival of the Year of the Sheep.

Similar news reports can also be easily found in other cities around the country.

Famous people born in the Year of the Sheep

Li Shimin, born in 559 and known as the Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, was one of the greatest emperors in Chinese history.

Mo Yan, born in 1955, is a famous Chinese author and China's first Nobel laureate in literature.

Celebrities like Chen Daoming (1955), Chow Yun-fat (1955), Liu Xiaoqing (1955), Jay Chou (1979), and Zhang Ziyi (1979) were born in the Year of the Sheep.

What they say

Gu Jun,professor of social science with Shanghai University, said that it's unscientific to connect people's fate to their year of birth. Meanwhile, flocking to have babies in the same year not only exhausts hospital resources and causes inconvenience to pregnant women, it also arouses other social problems. These include fiercer competition for good schools, colleges, and employment for the children born in that year.

Liu Ciyuan, a researcher at the National Time Service Center of the Chinese Academy of Science, said that it makes no sense, and a man's fortune is in his own hands, which has nothing to do with birth signs.

Netizen "ren jian si yue tian 525" comments: the birth sign only refers to a particular year and how come so many people believe in the superstition. I was born in the Year of the Sheep, so was my boyfriend and the actress Gao Yuanyuan. How wonderful it is!

Netizen "chunfengshili-buruni" comments: I was born in the Year of the Sheep, so were my peers. The view has no scientific foundation; otherwise all the people born in the Year of the Sheep wouldn't live. Moreover, those miserable people cannot be all born in the Year of the Sheep?