Good News

China officially announced the scrapping of one of the country's three "golden week" holidays on Sunday and introduced three new one-day public holidays. The new national public holiday plan adds three traditional festivals -- Tomb-Sweeping Day, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid- Autumn Festival -- to the list of public holidays. The plan, which comes into effect on January 1, also increases the total number of national holidays from 10 to 11 days. Each of the three traditional festivals will be a one-day holiday, according to the plan unveiled by the State Council, or China's cabinet. The Spring Festival remains a three-day public holiday, but it will start one day earlier from the eve of the Lunar New Year, China's most important festival.

Can't wait until Tomb-Sweeping Day. I haven't seen that much activity in Mainland, but in Hong Kong this is a big deal. Obviously it is a bigger deal in Mainland than I thought. Great weight and respect is given to ancestors. This is one cultural difference I don't fully understand yet.

When someone dies, the mourning family will wear black armbands (sometimes) and you are not supposed to mention the departing relative. It appears to be bad luck or something. At the same time, people will mention discussing big decisions (marriage, job change) with their departed relatives. At some point speaking about the dead goes from unacceptable to acceptable.

The switch in holidays will occur after I leave which is a good thing. I like the three weeks off. If nothing else, it gives you some time in the office to get things done when you otherwise would be inundated with daily crisises.

The government is good about creating folklore around things to get people to do things the government doesn't want to do. I think Tomb Cleaning Day is one of those things. Now it will be incumbent on workers to clean up the graveyards at least once a year so that they government doesn't have to devote resources to doing it.