When the baby is born, the mother is required to "zuo yue zi" (stay in bed for a month) to recover from fatigue. During this month, she is advised to stay at home and not go outdoors. Cold winds, dirty air and tiredness are believed to exert ill effects on her health and her baby's.

A good name for a child is equally important. The Chinese think that a name can somehow determine the child's future. Therefore, all possible factors must be taken into account when a name is selected.

Traditionally, two parts of a name are essential -- the family name or last name, and a character showing the generational order of the family. Another character in the first name is chosen by the person naming the child. The generational characters in the name are usually given by the forefathers, who chose them from a poem or devise their own and add them to the family genealogy for future descendents. For this reason, it is possible to identify the relationships between family relatives just by looking at their names.

Another custom is selecting the newborn baby's "Eight Characters," which come in four pairs to indicate the year, month, day and hour of a person's birth, with each pair consisting of one "Heavenly Stem" and one "Earthly Branch," formerly used in fortune telling. It is traditionally believed in China that the world is made up of five principal elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. A person's name should include an element that he or she lacks in the Eight Characters. If he or she lacks water, for example, then the name should contain a word like "river," "lake," "tide," "sea," "stream," "rain," or any other word associated with water. If he or she lacks metal, for example, then the name must incorporate a word like "gold," "silver," "iron," or "steel."

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