Chinese thinking makes so little sense. We have class this weekend, because theres a long holiday coming up, so in exchange for 10 days of holiday, you work for 9 days in a row ahead of it. Then our university puts on drinks at a local bar on the Friday (last night). On a completely unrelated note, I missed my first class this morning. Turns out noone cares, so this good be a bad omen of things to come.
I have to say going out in China is always an experience. After the country and western bar where the Uni put on free drinks, we left in order to dodge any possibility of helping pay the tab, headed off to a barbeque/open air bar, then into another bar. Then at 2am I took it upon myself to attempt to help the police identify a random Asian guy comaed outside the bar. So after chatting with the cops for a hour, I now have friends in corrupt places. I also have raging headache and a shady memory of what exactly happened last night.
Had another marching practice, at which it was revealed the bus for the sports exchange leaves at 5.30am on the first day of the holidays. Still haven’t got used to this early morning thing and its killing me. No place in China for night owls.
Actually, Chinese thinking makes a lot of sense if you understand the system here. In the holiday case, you have to understand that China does not have weekends. Each week has two public rest days (公休日/gōngxiūrì), which in a normal week are Saturday and Sunday, making it look like China has weekends like the Western world. The difference is that these two rest days can be any day of the week, depending on the situation in any given week. So, Mid-Autumn, Qingming, May Day and Dragon Boat are supposed to be 3-day holidays. If the festival falls on a Friday or Monday, sweet, just take the holiday and a regular weekend. But if the festival falls on any other day of the week, the public rest days are shifted so as to give everybody 3 days straight holiday. A similar process happens with the Golden Week holidays (National Day and Spring Festival).
Still, 9 day work weeks suck, regardless of the reason.
hey wangbo, are you in china too? haha by ‘making no sense’ i was thinking off the revolt in nz if the nz govt tried a similar lark.
still its interesting to hear the reason behind it.
Yup, in Beijing. I was up in Dalian for a week with the mrs a few years ago, it’s a great city, one of the better places in China I’ve seen.
Been following your blog since you started up on blogtown, it’s interesting to see China through fresh eyes again. You seem to be enjoying it so far, so keep it up. It’s a great country to be living in.