Tens of thousands of Chinese rushed to wed on Wednesday, hoping that the auspicious 09/09/09 date would bring longevity to their marriages and lives.

The ninth day of the ninth month, "jiu, jiu" in Chinese, is a homonym for another word, "jiujiu", meaning "for a very long time", thus making the date a lucky day to get married.

The fact that another nine, or "jiu", is added for 2009 has only compounded the auspiciousness of the date.

"We were going to get married in March, but when we looked at the calendar and saw September 9, we changed our minds," a young man surnamed Yang said on Beijing television as he queued at a local marriage office.

"We have been waiting in line all night," he said as his bride-to-be held his hand and smiled.

As of late Tuesday, 3,500 couples had made online bookings to marry in three Beijing districts, while nearly 5,000 couples had made advanced bookings in Shanghai, said the China News Service.

By comparison, Beijing had a total of 170,000 marriages - an average of 465 per day - in the whole of 2006, which was a 25-year record at the time.

In the southern city of Guangzhou, more than 6,100 couples had registered to marry on Wednesday, while numerous large Chinese cities each reported wedding totals of at least 2,000 couples.

Officials were expecting many more newlyweds-to-be to crowd into marriage offices than those who had pre-registered, it said.

The number tying the knot in China was expected to surpass the number of couples who married on August 8, 2008 - the number eight is traditionally considered lucky, as it also sounds like the word for wealth.

On 08/08/08, 16,400 couples applied for marriage registration in Beijing alone, press reports said at the time.

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