Full working week

Today it starts a 7 days working week coming just before the “3 days holidays” for Qing Ming festival, 清明节 (Qīngmíng Jié). The festival is known as Ancestors Day or Tomb Sweeping Day and it will fall on the 4th of April. Common in China to link together 2 more days for an extended holiday, in order to allow people to travel large distances and reach home for the celebrations..

..And for balance, 2 extra working days are added at the week before.. making it a 7 days working in a row.. that it does not sound so much as a balanced week!!!

It would be so much better having 2 Saturdays at work, in the week before and after, but for many over here Saturday it is already a working day (or the companies expect that much), so that adding Sunday as well is.. normal, not weird at all!

I am used to this now.. being also officially the last week of my second year in China!!!!

Back to Qing Ming, my Chinese friends were suprrised to know that we have something more or less equivalent in Catholic religion: the 2nd of November, All Souls Day, or “Tutti i santi”, as called in Italian!

My holidays will be not far: I’ll just go to Shanghai and get 3 days of practice Aikido!!! Not such a smart way in general to use holidays in an unknown country, but the only way I feel like using it, given the chance!!

Aikido withdrawal, been there before, yes.. 🙂