Auspicious but unlucky: The perils of a lunar new year dragon baby boom
Al Jazeera
Many ethnic Chinese parents want a baby born in the Year of the Dragon. The problem is, so does everyone else.
Taipei, Taiwan – IHua Wu was born in 1976, the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac.
The only mythical animal in the zodiac, which includes a rabbit, a pig and a horse, the dragon is seen as particularly auspicious.
Wu is unsure whether his parents planned for him to be born that year – it was at least a pleasant surprise – but other Taiwanese parents certainly seem to have hoped for dragon children.
The year 1976 was a bumper year for babies in Taiwan – 425,125 births, up from the crude birth rate of 396,479 over the 1970s. It was a noticeable reversal from a birth rate that had been slowly on the decline.
“People in Taiwan kind of prefer to have kids who are dragons,” Wu said, because the dragon is known to be wise and charismatic in Chinese folklore.
