China's traditions get holiday boost
BEIJING — Instead of toiling in an office cubicle as she did two years ago, Ma Yanyan spent Thursday's Dragon Boat Festival as befits tradition: rowing in sync to a thundering drum beat with 20 teammates across a lake.
The government's decision to elevate three traditional festivals to national holidays gives Chinese, especially city dwellers, a chance to return to their roots and marks an evolution in the country's leisure time. Days off were once considered a frivolity — the two-day weekend was introduced fewer than 15 years ago — but have increasingly been added to the national calendar as the government embraced free-market reforms and tried to boost domestic spending.
Keen on bolstering traditional culture to replace fading communist ideology, authorities revised the program again early last year, trimming one weeklong holiday and allocating the extra days for three, shorter customary holidays.
"Time off from work gives me time to celebrate these holidays properly, with traditional activities like dragon boat racing," said Ma, a 32-year-old public relations manager for an environmental activist group. To prepare for this year's festival, Ma practiced several times a week with the Beijing Friendship Dragon Boat team.
The holiday commemorates the poet and government minister Qu Yuan, who drowned himself to protest corruption in the royal court 2,000 years ago; the dragon boats are meant to scare off evil spirits from consuming his body.
The shorter holidays — which also mark the mid-autumn and tomb-sweeping festivals — mean many Chinese are staying closer to home, and some observers say it has also spurred interest in Chinese culture.
"Even though Chinese have always celebrated traditional holidays, it has become more and more meaningful due to the new law," according to Liu Kuili, director of the China Folklore Association and a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank. "Rather than just blowing money on a shopping spree, they have time to make an effort to light lanterns at a community street fair or learn to make traditional foods such as dumplings."
