October 1 is National Day in China, a public holiday. Mao Zedong declared the establishment of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949. Today also marks the beginning of National Day Golden Week. Since 1999 many Chinese people have been given 7 days beginning on National Day to travel and visit family. There has been discussion about modifying Golden Week since it's somewhat disruptive to the economy, particularly in international business. Last fall when Terry was working here, he ended up scheduling a last-minute trip back to the U.S. on National Day, after he found out that none of the people he was working with would be around during the first week or so of October. And he's doing the same thing this year, leaving in a couple days to go back to the U.S. There will be another 7 days of holiday during Spring Festival Golden Week in early February.
I took a walk this afternoon to check out the National Day scene in our neighborhood. Families were out and about, and traffic was light. Half the business places I passed by were closed. Several groups of men were sitting on the sidewalk playing cards, with cell phones, cigarette packs and wagers laid out on a scrap of cardboard they used as a card table. There were quite a few fishermen casting lines over the rail into the harbor. Shenzhen is not exactly a hotbed of Communist political fervor, given its status as China's most successful Special Economic Zone, so it's not surprising that this was a fairly quiet day off work for a lot of people, and that's about it.
Mao died in 1976. Less than 2 years later, Deng Xiaoping's capitalist initiatives set China on a path of tremendous economic growth, which especially benefited Shenzhen, a former sleepy fishing town. Mao likely couldn't have imagined that in 2010 an American living in Shenzhen could go to an English language bookstore in Shanghai and find wrapping paper printed with the images at left.
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