If you're pregnant in China, you'll perhaps be surprised the most common question you get is, "Is it a boy or a girl?"

Doctors aren't supposed to tell you the baby's sex before the birth, for fear of selective abortion - a phenomenon that's not uncommon in a country where boys are traditionally preferred to girls and most couples are only allowed to have one child.

But my husband and I don't have a preference. So we didn't care as much from the outset as the others around us - relatives, friends, colleagues and even random passers-by.

The questions and theorizing started when I was only two months pregnant, which was too early to scientifically determine the fetus' sex.

But the questions started coming from the moment the news of my pregnancy leaked in the office.

The first to ask was a British colleague, who is the father of two girls.

He asked if I'd experienced morning sickness, which I hadn't. He laughed and said, "Then it's a girl! Girl's don't trouble mothers."

This aroused my curiosity.

A few minutes later, I asked an Indian colleague - a mother of two - if she had experienced nausea.

With a smile, she said, "I wish I had. Then, I could have been pampered." Shaking her head, she added, "I had two boys."

So one myth had been dispelled, but more were to come.

I had remained skinny for nearly the first four months of my pregnancy. So when I told a shop assistant, who said the dress I'd picked out was too big, that it wouldn't be in a few months, a middle-aged woman who was shopping in the store asked: "How long have you been pregnant?" When I told her, she replied in a definite tone, "It's a boy. You don't look (pregnant), even at this point."

From this I learned that folk wisdom says that boys don't change the body shape much aside from the belly or add much weight, while girls do.

I hoped I could believe it. But a week later, a friend's wife, who gained about 25 kilograms during her pregnancy, gave birth to a boy.

Since then, I've stopped trusting rules of thumb. I simply smile when people kindly offer their postulations about my baby's sex.

It was after I lost faith in anecdotal evidence's usefulness in determining whether I'm carrying a boy or girl that I had the funniest and most bizarre experience.

A woman in her late 30s and I were waiting for our cars to be repaired in a 4S store when she started interrogating me about my pregnancy. She asked a litany of questions, about my diet, weight gain, baby kicks and the like.

Then, of course, came the question about the baby's sex. I replied I don't know and don't care, to which she insisted she could tell by looking at the stretch marks.

"I had two babies - one boy and one girl. I know the difference. Believe me."

She then suggested I accompany her to the restroom so she could examine my marks like a palm reader.

I was amused and gave in.

After a minute or two of careful examination, she hesitantly told me, "The upper part shows it's a girl, but the lower part says it's a boy!"

So, it's either a boy or a girl. That much I knew already.

China Daily

(China Daily 07/20/2011 page20)