The number of new marriages recorded last year was 12.57 percent higher than in the previous year — a sudden increase related to the superstition that this year was an inauspicious year for marriage, a report by the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday.
The report showed that a total of 148,425 couples tied the knot last year, an increase of 16,574 from 2007.
The ministry attributed the rise to the many lovers who chose to get married early because they wanted to avoid doing so this year — which is believed to be a gu luan nian, or “lonely phoenix year.”
The superstition that the chances of losing one’s partner are higher in certain years — including this year — originated in Japan.
A “lonely phoenix year” is usually one in which there are two li chun, or “beginnings of spring” — one of the 24 seasonal periods in a lunar year.
As “spring” is metaphoric of romance in the Chinese language, the appearance of two “springs” in a lunar year is believed to be unfavorable to the longevity of marriages.
A “lonely phoenix year” can come every four to five years. The last such year was in 2004.
The ministry report said that 85.43 percent of men who got married last year were first-time grooms and 87.41 percent of women were first-time brides.
The average age of the first-time husbands was 31.1, while for the first-time brides it was 28.4, an increase of 0.1 years and 0.3 years respectively from 2007.
Of all the new marriages recorded last year, 14.49 percent involved one foreign spouse or one from China, Hong Kong or Macau, the report said.
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