Chinese Holidays in Need of Festive Makeover

I recently read this article while visiting Shanghai.  It really made me appreciate and miss the fun we had in our workplace, which made me more determined to try to bring these 'holidays' into my classes and share the festivities with my students.

Chinese holidays need a festive makeover

By Eric Fish-- Global Times, March 17, 2011

[ByLiu Rui/GlobalTimes]

On Thursday [March 17th], People all over the world will avoid being pinched by donning their tackiest green clothing and hitting the bars with friends to drink pints of Guinness. Some who are feeling especially lucky might exclaim to the opposite sex, "Kiss me. I'm Irish!"

St. Patrick's Day is the quintessential Western holiday. What would otherwise be just another forgettable saint's day honoring a Catholic missionary has become an international excuse to drunkenly dress and act stupid with friends.

The customs might be a bit silly and even perpetuate a few Irish stereotypes, but for one day each year, a country of just 6 million people gets almost uniformly positive attention from around the globe. On March 17, everyone is Irish.

St. Patrick's Day and other internationally successful holidays like Valentine's Day, Halloween, and Christmas draw an unfortunate contrast to their Chinese counterparts. While Chinese festivals are very old, symbolic and meaningful, there's one thing they simply aren't: festive.

Dragon Boat Festival, for instance, is pretty trivial if you don't have access to an expensive racing boat. Tomb-Sweeping Day is exactly what it sounds like, so not really an occasion to be merry. Mid-Autumn Festival has the exchange of moon cakes and the hanging of floating lanterns, but that's hardly anything to get excited about.

The Spring Festival is China's most pervasive holiday, but major customs include humdrum activities like cleaning the house and giving out hongbao (gift money in red envelops). Wearing red and shooting fireworks is festive, but so far hasn't been unique enough to grab much international attention outside cities with high Chinese populations.

Holidays that are successful internationally tend to have multiple customs which are fun, colorful and easily exportable. They give people an excuse to show off their creativity and draw closer to their community, all by acting a little goofy together for just one day.

Halloween is arguably the perfect such holiday. People of all ages creatively fashion colorful costumes, adults party with friends, and children go trick-or-treating among neighbors. Everyone has a great time and comes closer as a community.

In recent years China has watched some of these Western celebrations start to overshadow homegrown ones among its people. This in part prompted the government to amend the national holiday scheme in 2008 to give workers the day off to celebrate traditional Chinese festivals.

But many prevailing international festivals aren't public holidays in the countries they're most celebrated in; and this has actually helped to popularize them.

Part of the fun of St. Patrick's Day, for example, is to show off festive clothing at work and have themed staff parties.

If Chinese festivals ever hope to stay competitive at home and abroad, they need to add a little flavor.

If Lei Feng, a national soldier icon in 1960s, could be depoliticized, his holiday encouraging people to do good deeds has potential. So long as those good deeds could include buying drinks for friends.

Or there's the little-known Spirit Festival, when people burn fake money and make offerings to their ancestors. Maybe this could go a step further in honoring ancestors by wearing traditional clothing they might have worn in the past. This would be fun and easily adaptable to the culture of any country.

These are just a few poorly thought out ideas, but it wouldn't be hard to initiate some new customs to jazz up an existing festival. The tradition of watching the CCTV New Year's Gala with family during the Spring Festival is practiced by over 700 million people each year, and it just began in 1983. So is the tradition of complaining about how bad it was this year.

If China hopes for more soft power and cultural influence abroad, current initiatives like Confucius Institute and PR videos are one route. But an eventful Chinese holiday everyone can enjoy would probably do more to endear China to the world.

With 1.3 billion people reaching out to every corner of the globe, there's no reason why a Chinese-born celebration shouldn't be internationally recognized. China should follow Ireland's example and give the world a holiday it can relish.

The author is a master's candidate of Global Business Journalism at Tsinghua University. His blog: sinostand.com. ericfish85@gmail.com



China's new drunk driving laws now in effect

Evidently May 1st new drunk driving laws went into effect in China.  Prior to that drunk driving was seen as a civil offense or misconduct with a revocation of a drivers license up to three years.  Now it is a criminal offense with revocation of up to five years and the possibility of a lifetime ban.  It also appears that police are enforcing it because recently, Wednesday night, Ying and I went out with some of her girlfriends to celebrate the daughter of one who was selected for a masters program at the NE Normal University in Changchung.  One of the women who drove to the restaurant called her husband to come get the car so she would not have to leave it.  Yesterday (Thursday) our nephew was visiting us when my wife's brother called to say he had a few to many beers and asked my nephew to come and drive him home.  In the past both of them would have driven home and not thought twice about it. 

A Chinese newspaper even went so far as to show the first person detained under the new drunk driving laws.  He may have a grin now, but I doubt he had it the next day.  I especially liked his response when the police asked him if he had been drinking, "I did, just a little."  It reminds me so much of responses I've heard in the states...."Honest Ossifer, (burb) I only had two drinks, honest (burb)."

http://english.caing.com/2011-05-04/100255532.html

Watching a sad sight...

Today is May 1st, which is a holiday here in China, but right now I don't feel to festive.  I saw something that makes me question how efficient emergency services are here in China.  The street we live on is a major street here in Yanji which while busy, the traffic is not heavy.  About a block from us is an intersection with the main east/west artery from the city center.  The traffic on this street is always busy, but the majority of vehicles are either taxis or small busses.  Now crossing the streets here in Yanji is sometimes a bit of an adventure because drivers don't readily yield to pedestrians even if you are in the crosswalk.  If a driver wants to make a left hand turn and their is oncoming traffic or people crossing, as far as the drivers are concerned, its "DAMN THE TORPEDOS, FULL SPEED AHEAD."  But the bus drivers are in a class all their own.  When they are in the inside lane, anywhere from half a block to closer to the intersection, their stop is just to the other side of  it and if the light has or is about to change to red, they have this nasty little habit of pulling into the oncoming lane, blow through the intersection to get to their stop with no consideration of what might be coming.  Many a time I have been crossing the street only to be stopped short as a bus honks its horn a split second before it cuts me off.

Today this practice if it hasn't seriously injured him, may have killed a man.  As I was looking out our apartment window at the intersection I saw a group of people standing in it.  As they moved I noticed a motorcycle on its side, an empty bus stopped just past it, then finally a person lying on the street.  I immediately knew the bus had run a red light and hit him.  As I watched the person and the motorcycle was surrounded by people as a shield while taxis and just weaved their way around and between them.  About 15 minutes later the police finally showed up, but other than taking some pictures but didn't do anything to control the trafffic that was continuing to move in and around the accident scene or appear to render any aid of any sort.  The ambulance didn't show until 35 minutes later and even then they didn't seem to be much in a hurry, which leads me to believe they guy may had been killed.  Less than 15 minutes later the motorcycle was picked up, debris swept away and now the intersection looks like nothing has happened.

Even though I have been driving for over 40 years, incidents like this scare the bejabbers out of me and just reinforces my decision to not drive in Chinese cities.

Rejoining the workforce

Since we came came to China last September, I have not been working per se, but I have been tutoring children of various ages in my home.  While the work is rewarding, I get bored between classes.  It also happens that my wife is getting tired of the city she grew up in (Yanji) despite the large number of family and friends she has here (she had gotten spoiled, living in Texas), so we decided I would apply for a regular teaching position.  The thing is, if the position you was interested is filled, recruiters try to offer you other positions that are not necessarily to your liking. 

One thing most jobs had in common was that the pay was usually low and the area was not to our liking.  There was a few cases where the pay and area was ok, but the interview left me cold.  Most times it was because the "English Teacher or School Principal" who hired me language skills were so bad that I either did not understand them or made me wonder as to how good the school was.  I imagine I have torqued off a few recruiters who went through all the trouble of submitting my information to the school, convincing them I am worth their time, getting me the interview, having the school say they will hire me, only to lose their fee because I said in some cases not only no, but HELL NO!

I finally accepted a position that offered good pay (10,000 RMB/month) and I'll be teaching US History, English Literature and English type classes in regular Chinese Chinese high schools where the students have decided to forgo the Chinese college placement tests in favor of taking the placement tests for an American university. 

What made this school different was that the recruiter was an employee of the same people I would be working for, his English was excellent during the initial interview.  He also told me that I would be interviewed by a history teacher the next day.  Lo and behold, the teacher I was talking to was another American.  We had a short discussion about teaching methods, then he asked me my opinon about a disagreement he was having with a Chinese US history teacher about the policies of President Woodrow Wilson.  Soon afterward the recruiter told me that he would be submitting my name with a recommendation to approve to the head of the school.  My wife and I wanted to go to Shanghai/Nanjing area because she has friends there, but we will end up instead in Shijianghuang (south of Beijing) at their No. 2 High School.  Since then, my wife has talked to a friend there and they tell her that this school is the top school in the city.  She is still afraid that the city would be similar to Yanji, only bigger, but she knows how much this job means to me, so she will make the best of it.  I told her that if I do my time here and if we decide to stay another year, I can see if I can transfer to Nanjing, to which she said ok.  I am so looking forward to this new job and overjoyed I will actually be working in my major with a little English, I hope, on the side.

Wife's Birthday

Yesterday (April 16th) was Ying's (my wife) birthday.  We went to her parents house in Helong to celebrate.  Needless to say, whenever we go there to eat, they put out an amazing spread of food.  Ying, her sisters and nieces all get together and make lots of dumplings.  Along with the dumplings they also have other foods which I thoughly enjoy.  Needless to say, I was so full from the huge lunch that Ying and I did not need supper or much of a breakfast this morning.  Ying made some flour tortillas, scrambled some eggs with tomato, onion, bell pepper and homemade salsa for breakfast tacos.  It made me feel like we were back home in Texas.

About time I started...

I've been in China for the last six months and figured it was high time I began to write about living and working here.  Last month Ying my NBCNUSC (Native Born Chinese Naturalized US Citizen) wife and I went back to the US for vacation (22 March-7 April).  Part of the reason we went was to introduce Ying to realitives from my mother's side of the family.  Another was to visit family friends in Kerrville, Texas and visit their daughter, whom Ying cared for (she has ALS), but the main reason was to find the Sharp Family Cemetary in central Missouri.  My father passed away just before Christmas 2005 in Texas and my mother passed away February this year (2011) in Arizona. Both were creameted, but their wishes were to have their ashes interred in their headstones in Missouri.  My brother who also lived in Arizona (appointed my mother's guardian (she had Alzheimers)) had control of the ashes of both mom and dad.  Since neither me or my brothers had not been there since we were children we did not remember where it was.  My younger brother who lived in Oregon decided he would instead put their ashes in a memorial garden in his yard. I however decided to make it a personal quest to find it.  I researched the information I had on the family and based on descriptions had a rough idea where it was.  I looked it up on Google Earth but the detail was not such that I could pin it down exactly.  I had planned on stopping in Missouri on our way from Illinois to Texas, but the weather was cold and snowing  so I decided to hit it on the way back, which we did.  Once in Rolla, Missouri Ying and I drove out to the area to look for it, but with a child's memory I could not find it, so we headed back to town to visit the funeral home that my family used, but the people there now couldn't help me so as a last resort I decided to go to the county courthouse.  The receptionist there told me that she knew a person who was an expert on local cemeteries. Dorthy James and Ruth Adair were such great helps,  They determined the cemetary was just over the county line in Maries county. and found the map of its location.  I plotted it on my GPS and Ying and I went to find it.  As were getting closer I realized my plot was a little off.  I got to a location that I knew was past it so I decided to return and make a copy of the map.  On the way back I was driving slower with one eye on my GPS and the other on the road when suddenly out of the corner of my eye I saw the headstones.  I suddenly blurted out, "There it is!" Ying asked me how I knew and I told her it was because of the headstones.  She was skeptical till she went into the cemetary and saw that most of the headstones had the Sharp surnane.  As we were taking pictures of the markers, Ying reminded me that this was "Tomb Sweeping Day" in China, so it was appropriate that we found it that day instead of a week earlier.