I was planning on sleeping in today, enjoying my warm bed and maybe even read for a bit.  I have a book that is just begging to be picked up and read.  I was actually hoping to begin packing for our upcoming trip over the October holiday.  I mean, it is Saturday.  I should reasonably expect to be able to do all of those things on a Saturday, right?

Wrong!

The Chinese concept of “making up” for vacation days still baffles me, especially on a day like today.  Of all the things that differentiate China from America, this is the one cultural idiosyncrasy that even after three years of living here never fails to annoy me.  We used to complain about it to our local friends but since they’ve lived with this idea of “making up” vacation days ever since they were kids, they don’t understand why we’re unnerved.  It’s just part of life here, and if you call China your home, you just have to deal with it and go on.

Here’s how it works:

• People in most professions (excluding food, tourism, etc.) here in China will get September 29th through October 5th off from work.  This is a holiday to celebrate the declaration of the People’s Republic of China by Mao ZeDong on October 1st, 1949.  It’s the closest thing to July 4th that we celebrate in America, although the celebration is much more mellow.
• This holiday is touted as the “7-day holiday” (Monday-Sunday), the only one we have left after the May holiday was broken up by government decree.
• In order to “make-up” for this holiday, we must work either the weekend before, the weekend after, or one day from both weekends.  This year we are working this Saturday and Sunday.  We never know which it will be until usually about the week before.

So if you really think about it, considering the fact that we already get weekends off, these extra two days of work mean that this “7-day holiday” is actually just a 3-day holiday.  If this is still confusing to you, there is a much better, much more detailed description of this absurd vacation schedule by John at Sinosplice.

Applying this logic, we might as well work the full month of September, without any weekends, and then give ourselves a 15-day holiday in October!  I don’t think too many people would be excited about that.  Including these weekend “vacation make up” days, this week will be a 7-day work week, and I’m going to have to sleep for 2 days of my vacation just to “make up” for the extra work.  This all makes perfect sense.