Holiday Madness

Believe it or not, this is not a Christmas post; it is about Holidays in China. You see, there are three "Golden" weeks in China in which the entire country gets 7 days off of work. One is in May for the international labor day holiday, one is in October for National Day celebrations and the best one of all is in January or February - the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year to us lao wai. To get the 7 days off, though, China's powers that be announce some work day rearrangements. You see, people do not get 7 real holiday days. They get 3 holiday days with 4 weekend days lined up nearby. In practice, this means that we are officially supposed to work either the weekend before or the weekend after the 7 day holiday period.

Chinese people do not bat an eye at this work day rearranging, but it would surely cause near riots in the United States. I mean, you cannot mess with a God-given right to a weekend! This week, the announcement came from HR that China has decreed December 30 and 31 as official workdays, with January 1-3 as holidays. So essentially, they moved the weekend to after New Year's Day. Jut because. And again, not a SINGLE person at work thought it unusual.

Now really, there must be a better way to boost your annual GDP estimate, isn't there?