A few posts ago, I tried an experiment and asked what people would like my next blog post to be about. Only three people responded, but I actually thought it was a good start. Two people voted for a post on coworking, which I wrote on Sunday. One person voted for a post on life in Beijing, so here’s a short example of something that’s different here.
Mid-Autumn Festival is this Thursday so, naturally, people get a day off work. This is all well and good, except that in China, one single day off work is not sufficient for any holiday, so the government gave everyone Wednesday and Friday off work, too. However, they don’t want to sacrifice the extra working days, so now everyone has to work the Sunday before and the Saturday after. In fact, every holiday in China is like this, and every year they come up with a brand new schedule of working days. Sometimes, they end up with 7 or more working days in a row, just to get the odd Wednesday off. This confuses everyone and none of my friends ever seems sure until a day or two ahead of time whether they have to go to work.
The full complexity of this fall’s holiday schedule is explained in this WSJ article.
Of course, as a foreigner who is basically working independently here, I’d be tempted to just ignore the declared work days and continue working Monday-Friday. I do love my weekends. On the other hand, Judy wants the time off; she has to work on the weekends, and she needs to rest. So, overall, it’s tough. I ended up working on Sunday for 3/4 of the day, and today I’m watching TV with Judy at home while working on and off. It’s not really productive, but I think I’d feel guilty if I completely relaxed.
MPD 