Chinese holidays
It's been a while since my last posting which is somewhat unfortunate. I don't want to make excuses for myself but instead tell you about Chinese holidays.
2 weeks ago, China celebrated DuanWuJie or popularly know among Westerners as the dragon boat festival. It is the 5th day of the 5th month in the lunar calender. It is called dragon boat festival because people, usually men, would race dragon boats in celebration of this holiday. This is in commemoration of some ancient person who drowned in this day and people eat a kind of rice dumplings to honour him. Appearently, they also threw it into the waters for the fish to eat so that they wouldn't eat the drowned man. However, the historical and cultural reasons, as often with these holidays, have mostly been forgotten.
This wasn't even a holiday until some years ago when the government decided to preserve Chinese culture and started marking this date as national holiday. Being a date in the Lunar calender, the day always rotates over the week and this year it happened to be on a Wednesday.
You would think that having a day off in the middle of the week is pretty nice, simply feeling little sinfully indulgent with sleep-in mornings and a nice brunch. However, the Chinese government didn't think that was such a good idea, but instead decided to give people 3 days off (Monday-Wednesday). You would think that is almost too generous to be true, considering the Swedish only get one "squeeze day" (you get Friday off if a holiday is on a Thursday). That is correct. They aren't.
What the Chinese government does it to make Saturday and Sunday working days in order to compensate for the shortfall, prolonging the working week to 7 days. Supposedly, people would be able to properly spend time with their families and all that, if it had not been that you get so tired from working 7 days in a row that you actually need 2 days just to be able to do much at all.
On top it all, this isn't even a holiday that is much appreciated, so people end up complaining about having to work during the weekend and not doing anything during the holiday anyway.
I'll not blame the Chinese government for not writing much posts lately, but you can obviously see the reason why I haven't been is simply because I was too tired after the 7-day working week. I won't have this excuse in the future so you can expect more regular updates. Thanks for putting up with the irregular postings.
Your sometimes tired eyes and ears in Beijing
/Y
2 weeks ago, China celebrated DuanWuJie or popularly know among Westerners as the dragon boat festival. It is the 5th day of the 5th month in the lunar calender. It is called dragon boat festival because people, usually men, would race dragon boats in celebration of this holiday. This is in commemoration of some ancient person who drowned in this day and people eat a kind of rice dumplings to honour him. Appearently, they also threw it into the waters for the fish to eat so that they wouldn't eat the drowned man. However, the historical and cultural reasons, as often with these holidays, have mostly been forgotten.
This wasn't even a holiday until some years ago when the government decided to preserve Chinese culture and started marking this date as national holiday. Being a date in the Lunar calender, the day always rotates over the week and this year it happened to be on a Wednesday.
You would think that having a day off in the middle of the week is pretty nice, simply feeling little sinfully indulgent with sleep-in mornings and a nice brunch. However, the Chinese government didn't think that was such a good idea, but instead decided to give people 3 days off (Monday-Wednesday). You would think that is almost too generous to be true, considering the Swedish only get one "squeeze day" (you get Friday off if a holiday is on a Thursday). That is correct. They aren't.
What the Chinese government does it to make Saturday and Sunday working days in order to compensate for the shortfall, prolonging the working week to 7 days. Supposedly, people would be able to properly spend time with their families and all that, if it had not been that you get so tired from working 7 days in a row that you actually need 2 days just to be able to do much at all.
On top it all, this isn't even a holiday that is much appreciated, so people end up complaining about having to work during the weekend and not doing anything during the holiday anyway.
I'll not blame the Chinese government for not writing much posts lately, but you can obviously see the reason why I haven't been is simply because I was too tired after the 7-day working week. I won't have this excuse in the future so you can expect more regular updates. Thanks for putting up with the irregular postings.
Your sometimes tired eyes and ears in Beijing
/Y
