{"id":15055,"date":"2020-04-27T16:03:31","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T20:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/?p=15055"},"modified":"2020-04-27T16:03:31","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T20:03:31","slug":"labor-day-in-china-holiday-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/chinese\/labor-day-in-china-holiday-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor Day in China Holiday Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Friday is Labor Day<\/strong> (\u52b3\u52a8\u8282 l\u00e1o d\u00f2ng ji\u00e9) in China and many countries around the world. Commonly known simply as \u201c5-1<\/strong>\u201d (\u4e94\u4e00\u00a0 w\u01d4 y\u012b), it’s one of many short public holidays in China<\/a>. Actually, it used to be one of three Golden Weeks<\/strong> (\u9ec4\u91d1\u5468 hu\u00e1ng j\u012bn zh\u014du) but it was shortened in favor of adding a few other traditional festivals to the calendar. I’ve had some rather interesting experiences traveling in China during this holiday to say the least and I’d like to share them with you today! But first, a quick word about the confusing way China organizes these short holidays…<\/p>\n

The Confusing Holiday Calendar in China<\/h2>\n

Being from the USA<\/strong> (\u7f8e\u56fd m\u011bi gu\u00f3), I grew up being accustomed to having a long weekend for holidays like Labor Day and Memorial Day<\/strong> (\u7eaa\u5ff5\u65e5 j\u00ec ni\u00e0n r\u00ec). We just get an extra day off and that’s it. There’s nothing complicated about it. Over in China, let’s just say they do things a bit differently…<\/p>\n

Even though Labor Day is no longer a Golden Week in China, they still try to make it a 5-day holiday. People only actually get one day off, though. How does a one-day holiday make for such a long weekend? This happens because people need to go to school or work on the weekend before and after the holiday.<\/p>\n

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Labor Day crowd on the beach in Dalian.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you take a look at the holiday calendar for 2020 in China, you’ll see that the holiday goes from May 1-5. You’ll also see special extra working days on April 26 and May 9. This means working for 6 days one week, having 5 days in a row off the next, and then once again working 6 days in a row the week after that.<\/p>\n

\u4e2d\u56fd\u5047\u671f\u6709\u70b9\u4ee4\u4eba\u56f0\u60d1
\nzh\u014dng gu\u00f3 ji\u00e0 q\u012b y\u01d2u di\u01cen l\u00ecng r\u00e9n k\u00f9n hu\u00f2
\nChinese holidays are a little confusing.<\/h4>\n

If this system sounds confusing<\/strong> (\u4ee4\u4eba\u56f0\u60d1 l\u00ecng r\u00e9n k\u00f9n hu\u00f2), it’s because it is. Even though China does this every year for several different holidays, it’s always a mess. When I was teaching English in China, these kinds of holiday schedules always caused mass chaos. Eventually my center just gave up on following the government schedule because it was such a disaster trying to schedule classes around it!<\/p>\n

I discussed the holidays and a lot more in a post I wrote a few years back called “What’s it Really Like Working in China?<\/a>” Go and give that a read if you’re curious to know more about the culture of work in China. I also wrote a detailed post about China’s workforce<\/a> in honor of Labor Day that’s full of interesting information.<\/p>\n

My Wu-Yi Experiences<\/h2>\n

Throughout my years in China, I had several interesting experiences over the Wu-Yi holiday. In fact, these remain some of my most hilarious stories from my time there…<\/p>\n

Sleeping in a KTV<\/h3>\n

In 2010 I had just moved back to Beijing, this time with my girlfriend in tow. We met at a camping music festival in the States, so you can imagine our excitement when we saw a post online about the Yixian Camping Music Festival<\/strong> (\u6613\u53bf\u9732\u8425\u97f3\u4e50\u8282 y\u00ec xi\u00e0n l\u00f9 y\u00edng y\u012bn yu\u00e8 ji\u00e9). After a few months in the city, we were both ready to escape the smog and camp out under the stars, even if we didn’t know a single artist on the lineup.<\/p>\n

There was just one tricky thing about going to this festival – we had no idea how to get there. The website said to take the train to Baoding\u00a0<\/strong>(\u4fdd\u5b9a \u2013 b\u01ceo d\u00ecng) and then switch to a bus, so we went for it. Before heading to the train station, we went to Wal-Mart<\/strong> (\u6c83\u5c14\u739b \u2013 w\u00f2 \u0113r m\u01ce) in search of camping gear.<\/p>\n

It being a holiday weekend, the trains were sold out for several hours. With nothing else to do, my buddy and I started slamming beers and eating kebabs<\/strong> (\u4e32 \u2013 chu\u00e0n) in a random hutong<\/em>. Before long, we made friends with locals who offered us some baijiu<\/em><\/strong> (\u767d\u9152 \u2013 b\u00e1i ji\u01d4). Needless to say, we boarded that train a bit tipsy…<\/p>\n

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A trio of out of control rock and roll fans!<\/p><\/div>\n

To make a long story short, we couldn’t figure out the bus for the life of us after arriving in Baoding. Despite having the address and name of the festival in Chinese, no locals seemed to have any clue what we were talking about. My Chinese was (and still is) “horse horse tiger tiger<\/strong>” (\u9a6c\u9a6c\u864e\u864e m\u01ce m\u01ce h\u01d4 h\u01d4), so I had faith in my ability to get us there.<\/p>\n

Well, a few failed bus and cab rides later that faith was dwindling. It was getting dark, my friend and I were full on drunk at this point, and my girlfriend was about ready to cry. We threw in the towel and decided to get a hotel, but none of us had brought our passports<\/strong> (\u62a4\u7167 \u2013 h\u00f9 zh\u00e0o) with us. If you’re a laowai<\/em>, there’s no way you’re checking into a Chinese hotel without one!<\/p>\n

Stuck in the middle of nowhere with nowhere to go, we ended up going to a karaoke bar and just paying for a few hours to sleep on the couch. In the morning, the nice woman working there helped us get a cab to take us to the festival. We finally made it!<\/p>\n

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A Chinese music festival. Why not?<\/p><\/div>\n

Was it worth it? To be honest, probably not. There were two festivals in Beijing that weekend that we could have just gone to and slept comfortably in our apartment. However, I’m still telling this story ten years later so I’d say that alone makes it worth the struggle we endured!<\/p>\n

If you want to read the full tale of this ridiculous May Day adventure, here it is –\u00a0Part One<\/a>,\u00a0Part Two<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Worst Tour Ever<\/h3>\n

A few years later, we tried once again to embark on a Labor Day trip. This time we took the train to Dalian<\/strong> (\u5927\u8fde d\u00e0 li\u00e1n) – a coastal city in Liaoning province. We figured a few days hanging out by the Yellow Sea<\/strong> (\u9ec4\u6d77 hu\u00e1ng h\u01cei) eating fresh seafood<\/strong> (\u6d77\u9c9c h\u01cei xi\u0101n) would be nice. Little did we know it would soon turn into the trip from hell…<\/p>\n

Arriving in Dalian after an overnight train, I called our hotel for directions. They claimed they were full and had no record of my reservation. This was 2013 and neither of us had smartphones yet, so we were just stuck among the massive holiday crowd with nowhere to go.<\/p>\n

We started to walk around in search of a hotel that still had rooms at a reasonable rate. The first few places were outright rip-offs and it wasn’t looking good. Then one lady offered us a pretty good deal on a room so long as we joined one of their tours. I’ve had awful experiences with tour groups<\/strong> (\u65c5\u6e38\u56e2 l\u01da y\u00f3u tu\u00e1n) in China so I was very hesitant, but we decided to go for it simply for a lack of better options.<\/p>\n

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One of Dalian’s many, many squares.<\/p><\/div>\n

Looking back on this day tour, it was so ridiculously bad it’s hard to believe it actually happened. Some of the highlights included visiting a snake museum and a wildlife park where we were told about the “Cola Bear<\/strong>” (\u53ef\u4e50\u718a k\u011b l\u00e8 xi\u00f3ng). They seriously told people that the bears liked to drink Pepsi and sold them bottles of it at 3x the normal price to throw to them. Needless to say, the bears did not drink a sip of cola.<\/p>\n

The tour was so laughably bad that I ended up buying a cheap bottle of whiskey<\/strong> (\u5a01\u58eb\u5fcc\u9152 w\u0113i sh\u00ec j\u00ec ji\u01d4) just to get through the damn thing. It ended prematurely when I got into a battle of curse words with the horrendous tour guide and we ditched the group to make our own way back to the city.<\/p>\n

Let this be a word of warning to you – never, ever, under any circumstances, join a random tour group in China. I don’t care how bad your Chinese is. Getting lost and confused is far better of a situation to be in than being on one of these tours! Just watch the video and see for yourself…<\/p>\n