So, New Year is coming. It's the Year of the Pig ( and no, the fluorescent pig will not be televised). It's a good year for babies.

The year of the pig is an especially auspicious year for making babies, and as the February 18th lunar new year approaches, some local governments are going so far as to open new health clinics to service all those extra pregnancies.

And, from the link inside the link:

Shanghai will establish four new emergency centers for pregnant women with health problems this year to make room for an expected baby boom, Chen Zhirong, a member of the Shanghai People's Congress, told the organization's annual plenary meeting this week.

But some medical centers, well-known obstetrics and gynecology hospitals in particular, face a lack of beds this year due to an expected peak in births. The Year of the Pig on the lunar calendar is always popular for having kids, and this is a Golden Pig year, which happens only once every 60 years and is considered an especially good time to have children.

More than 137,000 births are expected in Shanghai this year, according to the city's Population and Family Planning Commission.

Unfortunately, Shanghai is a bad town for suicides, which doesn't seem to be changing this year.

SHANGHAI, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- A woman was killed after she jumped in front of a subway train in Shanghai on Monday, the second suicide to occur on the city's underground network in less than three weeks.

Or maybe I should say it's a good town (at least for those thinking about it), now that they have a helpful map....

I like the man-eating tiger (or tiger-eating-man) graphic.