Labor Day also used to be one of three "golden weeks" in the Chinese calendar--the other two were National Day in October and the Chinese New Year/Spring Festival in January/February. However, this changed a few years ago when it was decided to give official status to some traditional holidays that previously had not had such status. Rather than simply adding a few more holidays to the calendar, though, it was decided to create the new holidays by reducing the length of one of the "golden weeks"--so as to retain the same number of holidays on the calendar. It is telling that it was not the major political holiday--National Day--nor the most important traditional holiday--Chinese New Year/Spring Festival--that was reduced. Instead, it was the holiday honoring workers. It is also telling to me that the authorities seemed unwilling to given workers a few more days off--perhaps it was thought doing so would have an adverse effect on China's growth rate! Whatever the reason, when thinking about this I cannot help thinking about Ebenezer Scrooge's reluctance to give his clerk Christmas Day off in Dicken's A Christmas Carol, and his admonition--"Be all the earlier the next day"!
Here in China we have just celebrated Labor Day, or more correctly, International Labor Day. Labor Day in China is rather different from Labor Day in my home country, the United States. For one thing, they occur in different months--China's Labor Day is in May but Labor Day in the U.S. takes place in September. (Incidentally, while Labor Day is celebrated on May 1 in many countries, the U.S. is not quite an outlier in this case. Canada also celebrates it in September and some Australian states celebrate Labor Day on days other than May 1.) Perhaps more importantly, the relative significance of the holiday in the two contries is different. In the U.S., Labor Day is a relatively minor holiday (except, perhaps, for labor unions), traditionallly marking the end of the summer vacation season, and is often the last day before the academic year begins for public schools. However, in China, it is a quite major holiday. This should not be surprising, given that China is ruled by a Communist Party that professes to take the interests of workers foremost to heart. There are various events celebrating the ordinary worker (see, for example, the accompanying picture of singing workers). There are also public messages marking the occasion--like the graphic that has been appearing on the flat-screen TV monitors in the hallways of the administrative building where I have my office on a Chinese university campus (the TV monitors usually carry foreign language programming, presumably for the benefit of students in the school of foreign languages). The graphic features images of statues of heroic workers, presided over by a portrait of Mao Zedong. Above Mao appears the Communist hammer-and-sickle. The political message is rather obvious.
Labor Day also used to be one of three "golden weeks" in the Chinese calendar--the other two were National Day in October and the Chinese New Year/Spring Festival in January/February. However, this changed a few years ago when it was decided to give official status to some traditional holidays that previously had not had such status. Rather than simply adding a few more holidays to the calendar, though, it was decided to create the new holidays by reducing the length of one of the "golden weeks"--so as to retain the same number of holidays on the calendar. It is telling that it was not the major political holiday--National Day--nor the most important traditional holiday--Chinese New Year/Spring Festival--that was reduced. Instead, it was the holiday honoring workers. It is also telling to me that the authorities seemed unwilling to given workers a few more days off--perhaps it was thought doing so would have an adverse effect on China's growth rate! Whatever the reason, when thinking about this I cannot help thinking about Ebenezer Scrooge's reluctance to give his clerk Christmas Day off in Dicken's A Christmas Carol, and his admonition--"Be all the earlier the next day"!
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AuthorStephen W. Hoyle currently teaches classes in Language Arts and Latin at a private school in the Washington, DC area. Previously, he taught English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at universities in the United States and China. He received a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in linguistics from George Mason University. In addition to China, he has lived in Belgium and Taiwan, and traveled extensively in Europe. His interests include language (having studied French, Latin, modern Mandarin Chinese, classical Chinese, Japanese, and koine Greek), education, philosophy and Christian theology, literature (mainly poetry), history, and classical music. He is married to an immigrant from China and has a daughter who is a college student. Archives
April 2024
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