Last night, Stick predicted that I wouldn’t get paid on time, because the new shift in the state holiday calendar has led to an increase in mei you frustration. The holidays were rearranged to break up the long Golden Week holiday and give out more 3-day weekends throughout the year, which is actually a nice thought. I don’t know how this works in other fields, but for teachers, that means you need to make up an extra day’s worth of classes in your free time, because you have Monday off because Sunday is a holiday.

Anyway, I’m supposed to be paid on the tenth of every month, so I went to the financial office today to pick up my pay. It wasn’t there. A bunch of different reasons were discussed, I think it had something to do with someone along the way not submitting their timesheets to the school’s general payroll in time, apparently the deadline changed due to the holiday.

I went back to my boss and mentioned that today is payday, and I’d like to get paid. I was first told that there was no problem, then told that nobody else’s pay is ready, either.

Now, I don’t know what everyone else’s contracts promise, or whether everyone else would like to be paid on payday. But telling me that everyone else is also screwed doesn’t pay me OR increase my confidence in my school’s ability to solve this matter.

Also, there’s something my mom used to tell me about what everybody else is doing. Something about everybody else and jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge…

I argued with different people in different offices for a while, which started to make me feel like a demanding, entitled foreigner, until I remembered that I was arguing to get paid my agreed-on salary on my contract-specified date.

Then it was pointed out to me that it’s actually the tenth of the month all day long, so I really haven’t been screwed until the close of business today. And maybe if I wait, they’ll have it all straightened out by this afternoon. Maybe.

Related: Dragon Boat Day two years ago in Yantai

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Frustrations

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(Written on 6/1 but Dragon Boat Day is 5/31 so I’m backdating this)

Once there was a Chinese poet called Qu Yuan (??). Depending on who you ask, Qu Yuan either jumped or fell into a river and drowned, and the Chinese celebrate today as the anniversary of his death. (Maybe he wasn’t a very good poet?) Today is also Dragon Boat Day, a holiday involves which involves racing dragon boats and pushing poets off the boats. Ok, I may have made that part up. I think the races are actually to commemorate Qu Yuan.

I can’t seem to find two people who tell the story the same way, but everyone agrees this is a very important day. I’m actually pretty sad that my headmistress hasn’t included the foreigner teachers in celebrating Chinese holidays, but I’m not sure if that would be intruding. I think I’m biased because Stivison family holidays usually involve at least one friend from far away, like a British exchange student, the entire international student population of Wesleyan University…

Like all Chinese holidays, this one involves eating a lot. Today’s food is zong zi, which is a rice ball wrapped in a leaf. The rice can be filled with red bean, pork, sugar, fruit, fish or anything else you can think up. Instead of eating them, you can also thrown them into a river for the drowned poet.

Also, you’re supposed try to stand an egg on it’s end at exactly noon. If you can do this, you will have a very good year. And you should put a special kind of herb on your front door to protect your home from bad spirits. (I didn’t try either one, didn’t I already ruin my chanced by crying on New Year’s Day? And don’t I already have a good year from fireworks on Lantern Festival?)

Lily and her husband Bag invited me to have dinner with them, so we gorged ourselves at the nighttime food court as an appetizer for our zong zi. I love the night market, you can get such awesome food there! In fact, I think I’m starting to really love cheap Chinese food, it’s only the classy stuff that’s foul. Anything considered a delicacy is totally wasted on me. I had a really good time with Lily and Bag, eating good food, getting the elusive cold beer and just enjoying a summer evening by the beach.

This morning when I left the house, I saw that my neighbors had tucked some leaves into my door to protect me from bad spirits.

Related: Dragon Boat Day two years later in Beijing

From the blog Simpson's Paradox, please comment here:

Dragon Boat Day

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