This week starting on Thursday, 3 February, we celebrated the Spring Festival. Now the days prior are the busiest travel days in the country. Just about everyone tries to head back to their home province for their one & only annual vacation. Official vacation days here are about 11 a year but most of those days off are made up by forced work days on the weekends leading up to or after the holidays. Worker rights are not strongly adhered to as you can read in the news. The celebrations are fun & full of superstitions. The fun for them is fire off a variety of fireworks at all hours of the day but mostly at night…sometimes until 3am! That is why many expats get out of China during this time period. People with pets are concern as their pets are full of anxiety as it sounds like a war out there. The superstition part is that the firecrackers are supposed to scare away evil spirits. Then there is the burning of religious money for the dead to spend in their world. Yes, Chinese are very superstitious & a good example of it is found in this article in the BBC about China’s aging population:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12334284
Another one is found in The National Geographic magazine, January 2010, Title: “Restless Spirits”
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/01/chinese-afterlife/hessler-text.html
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