Terrible Chinese Holidays

On November 11th, my students asked me, "Do you know what day is today?" giggling with anticipation as they quizzed me.

I played along.  "No, what is today?"

"It's Singles' Day!" they exclaimed over guffaws.

"Oh," I said, not amused, "what is Singles' Day?"

"Wahn, wahn, wah, wahn," they said, gesturing with their pointer finger to emphasize the digits in the date 11/11.

I could do the simple logic, without their explanation, to determine that the calendar date was made up completely of one's, and that this symbolized a single person, so I was left to question why they were so gleeful about the eleventh of the eleventh.

"So, what do you do?"

Confused silence.  Smiles.

"What do you do on Singles' Day?" I demanded.  I could not have spoken more plainly.

They were holding their smiles, mouths beginning to twitch.  Still no answer.

"What is Singles' Day?" I spoke as if trying to be heard over crackling radio static.

"It's wahn, wahn, wahn, wan!"

I was about to conduct an impromptu lesson in English invectives.  If it had been the first time I had played this game- repeating the simplest of questions to non-answers or no answer- I would have just thought it odd and dismissed it with a laugh.  But I had gone through this routine in every classroom throughout the semester, and the novelty had long worn off.

"I know.  But what do you DO on Singles' Day?  I am single.  What do I DO?"

I had them trapped in a corner of logic.  This wasn't memorizing formulas, so my Chinese students had no way out.  Still smiling, one of the students, bold enough to be one of the regular (i.e. only) speakers for the rest of the mostly dormant class, held up his pointer finger again and said, "One is for singles."

"All right," I asked, sighing and looking downward to compose myself, "Do you know what happened November 11th, 1918?"

No guesses.

"Today is a real holiday in the west.  In 1918, World War I ended, so in America, today is a holiday called Veterans Day."  I wrote "veteran" and a simple definition on the board.

This pattern repeated itself in my other classes that day: students barely containing their excitement over Singles' Day and asking me if I could guess their surprise (I suppose that since it was 2011, it was the only day in our lifetimes we would see 11/11/11).  It was a pointless exercise, but to be fair, Singles' Day wasn't a national holiday or significant cultural celebration, just some obviously clever (and hence, not actually clever) day for some of my Chinese students to have fun with, like when Americans say "Hump Day" for Wednesday and spend more time discussing Daylight Savings Time than is saved.

Singles' Day was just a minor distraction, but what of China's National holidays and cultural festivals?  Roundly terrible.  They fall into non-events, nonsensical mythologies and historical tales, or proud displays of past communist victories.  Take National Day, October 1st, China's patriotic celebration of the founding of the People's Republic of China on that date in 1949.  Schools and many employers give the week off for National Day, so after the holiday I asked the students how they spent their time.

"Watch TV."  "Sleep."  "Play computah games."

"Oh," I said, underwhelmed by their honesty, "Did you travel?"  No response.  "What about National Day?  Did you do anything on National Day?"

Another moment of silence, then "Watch TV."

On the 4th of July, Americans at least take part in the celebration of our nation's independence.  Friends and  families gather, enjoy time outside, eat summer food together, and attend fireworks displays, not watch them on TV.  Why wasn't anyone in China, land of firecrackers that rattled me as I looked through my refrigerator most mornings, telling me about some outdoor festival or gathering with food, parades, and fireworks?

One young man, after I mentioned Independence Day, told me (in reference to National Day) that China had a day of independence, too.  "Oh?  You celebrate independence from whom?" I asked him.

He repeated, "Yes, we have Independence Day in China, too."  I emphasized from whom again, but I don't think he caught my meaning.

The big letdown of the National Day holiday week was receiving a text message from my escort teacher on Saturday: "SO, ARE YOU READY FOR CLASS TOMORROW?"  (Most of my Chinese friends typed their text messages in all-caps.)

I replied, "You mean Monday, right?"

"NO, WE HAVE CLASS ON SUNDAY.  FRIDAY MORNING CLASSES ARE TOMORROW.  AM I CLEAR?"

I think I could have complained that Sunday classes weren't on my contract, but I wasn't going to protest.  I swallowed my personal feelings and told myself to do it for the students.  I would have to repeat this mantra to motivate myself on several other occasions throughout the year.

I wanted to point out to whomever was in charge that a day off on Friday is not a holiday if everyone has to work on Sunday; it's just a tease of a weekend followed by a 6-day work week.  I knew my argument wouldn't have made a difference, though.  I vented my frustrations and poked holes through the logic of the "holi-shift" (since it's not a free day, just a shift in schedule) to an audience of my escort teacher, Ms. Ding (she came with a car to my apartment and took me to class in the morning), and like an immovable wall of Chinese school status quo, she rattled off in Morse-code rhythm, "But the students have many tests.  They must have class on the weekend so they can take their tests."

Ms. Ding and me

Not only that one Sunday, the students would have tests occasionally on Saturdays and other Sundays.  Christmas Sunday my university students had tests all morning.  Not that the state recognizes any holy days, but the people still celebrate Christmas in their own way.

So schoolwork takes precedence over days of rest (they ought to learn from America that only commerce takes precedence over days of rest), and the state promotes hollow commemorations of Communist party history, but besides these, the Chinese observe a mishmash of historical and mythological celebrations.

There's the Mid-Autumn Festival, held on the full moon in late September or early October, which celebrates a story about the Moon's sister, who lives on the moon, and her husband who offers her sacrifices once a year (moon worship during the holiday was built up on this story).  Now, I'll admit that when the Santa mythology is layered over Christmas, it is certainly far-fetched, but there is usually some fantasy logic behind the magical yarns.  I tried to read through the story of the Moon's sister and gauge the people's reaction to it to see if it was just a tongue-in-cheek occasion for fun, if the story wasn't so important but just a lingering pretext for a holiday.  Well, I can say that moon worship still takes place (I didn't see it in person but discussed it with Chinese friends).  Why worship according to an irrational idea?  What other answer could there be than the ever-present power of cultural tradition.

The big plus of the Mid-Autumn Festival was getting a holiday, a real day off work not made up on a Saturday.  But what happens during the Mid-Autumn Festival?  Front and center, in my observation, were "standing outside and looking at the moon" at its brightest, and giving and eating moon cakes- a dense, disc-shaped pastry with a decorative top and a fruit or nut filling.

Taste as good as they look.

Stores stocked moon cakes leading up to the holiday so people could gift them to their friends, but I would have been glad to buy them year round.  After September, I never did see them again, sadly.  Moon cakes are a pastry, so it's not like their availability depended on ingredients being in season.  I suppose their popularity is not unlike the spike in sales of whole turkeys in November.  Americans could eat roast turkey any time, but they don't.

The other minor, food-related holiday is the Dragon Boat Festival, held in the spring and celebrated, if that is the word for it, by eating sticky rice triangles wrapped in bamboo leaves.  The rice would usually have a piece of meat or fruit in the middle.  I asked some of my Chinese friends and acquaintances about the significance of the Dragon Boat Festival, and all I got were uncomfortable grimaces and explanations that the history behind the day wasn't so pleasant.  My Christian friends said the day had a bad meaning, so they chose not to honor it, but still encouraged me to have some sticky rice triangles.  I had to look up the meaning myself and found out it commemorated a minister and poet, Qu Yuan (pronounced- oh, who am I kidding? make up your own pronunciation), who drowned himself in a river; the traditional story follows that the locals dropped sticky rice into the river so that fish would not eat his body.

Every time an acquaintance inquired if I knew about the Dragon Boat Festival, I replied with my own question, "No; do you have dragon boats in the river?"  They reacted like an American might if a foreigner asked him on March 17th, "So, where is St. Patrick?"  Of course they didn't have dragon boats in the river, I could tell by the awkward silence on their faces, why would they?

Dragon Boats not included.

I was left to conclude that it was another silly, minor holiday barely worth mentioning yet inspiring gleeful responses from the natives.  The sticky rice triangles they kept asking me about- I had already eaten four or five the week prior.  A fine snack, but giving these out or having them for lunch constituted a holiday?  Imagine May Day without kids having the fun of distributing cups of candy; instead the day was about eating bagels for lunch and asking friends if they'd had their May Day bagel yet.

I suppose it's my American upbringing that makes me expect some kind of ritual or public action, even for the stupid holidays with convoluted historical and mythological meanings, like St. Patrick's Day and the practice of wearing green, boasting how proud you are of your far-removed Irish heritage, and riding an excuse for public binge drinking.  Yes, in America, we don't make a big show by asking people if they've had a muffin for Flag Day.  We take a quasi-holiday like Halloween, shape a fun costume-and-candy children's tradition around it, and then take part in it ourselves, planning our costumes months in advance so that we are the cleverest movie character in the office on Halloween Day or the sexiest vampire at the after-hours party.

And when it comes to arbitrary dates, we don't settle for a giggle over Singles' Day on 11/11.  No, we take the entire month, call it "No Shave November" and grow ourselves a mustache.  Never mind the absurdity, we are a people of action and alliteration (e.g. "Taco Tuesday").

So, lest anyone accuse me of ignoring the plank in my own eye while pointing out the speck in China's, let me end by stating my disdain for the nonsense that takes place stateside, where radio DJ's and overly cheery colleagues squeal for attention by asking everyone in earshot if they knew it was "Talk Like a Pirate Day."

"So what do you do for that?" I might ask.

Giggles.  "You say, 'Aarrh!  Matey!"  "Arr!"  "Aarrg!"

"Anything else?  What's the point?"

"You get to say, 'Aarrh!' and 'Walk the plank!'"

"Oh.  Some holiday."