This last week was a vacation for the country of China. The 1st of October was their national holiday, this year celebrating 62 years of the People’s Republic of China. Instead of just taking off that Saturday, everyone gets the whole week off. However, I found out that the days of vacation were technically the 1st through the 5th, or through Wednesday. But since everyone wants to maximize the consecutive days off, the all-powerful China, switched the days of the week.
Okay, so that’s not exactly what they did, but not far off. Companies, schools, and government organizations got Thursday and Friday off, but then Saturday and Sunday were regular work/school days. This is not an isolated event; it happens several times a year in China. The only reason that the same didn’t happen to me is because we are an international college and so they observe the more common Western practices (LIKE A WEEKEND!!!). I think it would be fair to say that a company in the U.S. would have as much right to do this, but you can forget about schools or governments enforcing this on a mass level.
To the Western mind, this would be a disregard for sacred Sabbath days for many religions and at the very least one’s personal time to R&R, but I just read in a multi-generational Chinese memoir that after the founding of the P.R.C. it wasn’t until the early 60s that party officials (and probably many other professionals followed suit) were allowed to have Sundays off. The Great Leap Forward attempted to industrialized the people to the point of non-stop work. And as a result we have lost the exuberance of T.G.I.F. in the Orient.
No comments:
Post a Comment