On November 11th, my students burst forth upon me with a quiz. “Do you know! What day is today?” Some were giggling with anticipation.
So I played along. “No, what is today?”
“It’s Singles’ Day!” they exclaimed over guffaws.
“Oh,” I said, not nearly as 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 indeed made all up of one’s, and that one symbolized a single person, yet I was left to question why they were so very 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 still holding their smiles, mouths beginning to twitch. But 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 lose face in front of the whole class. If it had been the first time I had played this game in China- repeating the simplest of questions to non-answers- I would have just thought it odd and dismissed it with a laugh. But I had gone through this routine in every classroom so far in the semester, and the novelty had long worn off.
“I KNOW.” Huffing the stress out of my nostrils, then, “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 began, sighing and looking downward to compose myself, just managing not to crush the chalk in my hand, “Do you know what happened November 11th, 1918?”
Absolutely 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 its 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 Saving Time than is saved.
But what of the national holidays and cultural festivals in China? Roundly terrible. They fall into non-events, nonsensical mythologies and convoluted historical tales, or proud displays of communist victories.
Take National Day: October 1st, the patriotic celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on this date in 1949. Schools and many employers give the week off for the days surrounding National Day, so after the holiday I asked my classes 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 a student brave enough to answer for everyone else forced out: “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 America’s Independence Day, told me (in reference to National Day) that China had a day of independence, too. “Oh?” I asked slyly, “You celebrate independence from whom?” I had to repeat myself a couple times, but I don’t think he ever 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?”
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 and cause friction. I swallowed my personal feelings and told myself to do it for the students. I would end up having 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 wasn’t 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 said, “But the students have many tests. They must have class on the weekend so they can take their tests.”
Ms. Ding and me outside of our middle school.
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 their godless state recognizes any holy days, but the people still celebrated Christmas in their own borrowed, bastardized way.
So schoolwork takes precedence over days of rest in China (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 people 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 (yes, you read right), who lives on the moon, and her husband who offers her sacrifices once a year. Moon worship during the holiday was built upon this story. Now, when the Santa mythology is layered over Christmas, it is certainly far-fetched, but there is usually some fantasy logic behind the magical yarns. Santa uses helpers to deliver all the toys, he has the elves to help make presents, moms and dads help Santa, too, and so forth. 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, that the story wasn’t so important but just a lingering, fossilized 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? The power of cultural tradition, I suppose.
The big plus of the Mid-Autumn Festival was getting a holiday, a real day off work not made up for later on a Saturday or Sunday. 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, as my friends advertised to me, and giving and eating moon cakes- a dense, disc-shaped pastry with a decorative top and a fruit or nut filling.
The Mantis is a pretty big fan of most kinds of moon cakes.
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, unfortunately. 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 probably 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. Not bad, but not holiday-worthy.
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 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 as a political protest or sacrifice. The traditional story follows that the locals dropped sticky rice into the river so that fish would not eat his body. Cheers to that! I suppose.
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 are St. Patrick and his snakes?” Of course they didn’t have dragon boats in the river, I could tell by the awkward silence on their faces, why would they?
I’m using a stock photo found online because, as I said, you can’t actually find one of these to take a picture of in the real China.
I was left to conclude that it was another silly, minor holiday barely worth mentioning, yet nonetheless 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. What was so special about them? A fine snack, but giving these out constituted a holiday? Imagine May Day without kids having the fun of distributing cups of candy by ringing doorbells and running way; instead the day was about eating bagels for lunch and asking friends if they’d had their May Day bagel yet.
Of course, the holiday of holidays in China is the Spring Festival (held in either January or February, go figure) usually referred to as the Chinese New Year in America. Being a holiday of holidays, it is basically an amplification of Chinese merry-making. Impossible amounts of dumplings and popular homemade foods are prepared and consumed. Dinner plates are piled in layers and tabletops are obscured for days. Nearly everyone gets work off for the week or weeks-long celebration (depends on the area), so train travel and public transportation are even more of a dystopian nightmare than usual, and once the workers and students get home, the tops of liquor bottles are smashed en masse and swallowed down along with the lavish, largesse-proving spread of foods.
Like other Chinese holidays, families like to hang around their homes for feasting, TV watching, and likely games of cards and mah jong (no, it’s not played like the mah jong computer program; more like rummy). Children are especially excited to receive a red envelope of lucky money, equivalent to a Christmas gift, but in the form of cash. And, unless living in a large enough city that performances would be organized, the colorful festivities like dragon and lion dances would have to be watched on TV, as per usual. Each day of the Spring Festival has its own superstitious meanings and rituals, which I won’t detail here, partially because that trivia can be found in dry lists elsewhere and mostly because I have little interest in perpetuating their charming nonsense. For example, the fifth day of the Spring Festival is supposed to be the god of wealth, Guan Yu’s, birthday, so people light firecrackers to get his attention.
Not that the Chinese need an excuse to light off firecrackers. Some areas have issued bans on fireworks for reason of noise and air pollution, but regardless, in a lesser policed city, it is expected that fireworks will last throughout the night to herald the turning of the lunar calendar, and nary a sublunary creature can expect to get any sleep. The celebrants don’t light one pack of skinny red tubes, but grand, street-stretching rolls of finger-sized explosives. Plus, the sound will be reverberating off of the surrounding concrete high-rises built all around.
I wasn’t even in town for all of this fanfare. I had to hear about it from everyone, nearly all of whom hyped it as the greatest party in China and the greatest part about living in China. And, whenever the conversation seemed to imply that things in my neck of the Chinese woods were dull, the Spring Festival was always brought out as an apology- the feast I just had to take part in and see. The ultimate party that I had missed, which was thenceforth sealed in the vaults of nostalgia and spoken of as a legendary euphoric experience. But, unlike pathetic adults who are trapped telling tales about “last year” or their high school glory days, Chinese New Year repeats itself every year, so everyone knows well enough to buy their train or bus tickets plenty early to make the mad-as-salmon rush back home.
That, the Spring Festival, is arguably the one feast day worth feasting about in China, and yet, I would argue that the things inspiring the celebration- the change of the lunar calendar, the superstitions alleged to garner luck for the upcoming year, the deference to all kinds of dubious gods of wealth and whatnot with jolly offerings and rituals- are preposterous pretext. Visiting family, especially when far apart and visits home are costly and rare, seems very worthwhile, but the impetus- a new calendar year- what is essentially so important about that?
At least there is something more to do that day than remark that it is in fact a holiday when business is heedlessly proceeding all around like a typical work day. I suppose it is my American upbringing that makes me expect some kind of ritual or public action to make a holiday official, 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 something to eat 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 beard. Never mind the absurdity, we are a people of action and alliteration (“Taco Tuesday” anyone?).
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!’” Raucous laughter.
“Oh. Some holiday.”
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