The WWII Holiday

Holidays are always confusing to us….the ones at home seem to go by here without notice. It is harder to remember them when there are no outside cues. No Thanksgiving turkeys or end caps full of ingredients for green bean casserole – school is actually in session on Thanksgiving day…No months of advertisements or Sunday papers full of flyers for Christmas gift ideas or things on sale. No bags of candy, no Easter eggs – No nothing to remind us of all the wonderful celebrations going on at home. Or if there are attempts at helping us remember our holidays, they are usually slightly “off”, like strange offerings of weird “jelly like” candies for Halloween, or Christmas type trees in big green pots they will deliver to your house.

But even more curious are the “pop up” holidays like the one we just had. The celebration of the end of World War 2- the 70th anniversary of the Japanese aggression. For this holiday, we were allowed to drive every other day, according to our license plate number. From August 22- September 6, we drove on even days only. This cut the traffic in half and allowed workers to beautify downtown, so when Xi Jinping, the current president of China, reviewed troops, Beijing would be beautiful and perceived as an international power to the world.

For the people who live here, it was a little inconvenient and very curious. Due to the way the dates fell last week, we were allowed to drive only one day. Wednesday. I went downtown with some girlfriends…while there, one of my friends got a message on one of her chat groups that the police were shutting down the 4th ring at noon. Hmm. It was 11 am by that time. It also stated that anyone caught on the wrong side of the 4th ring without documents would be detained 48-72 hours, until Xi Jinping left Beijing. Lucky for me, I had my residence card, and everyone in the car had some sort of I.D. We, along with everyone who lived outside the 4th ring, got on the road and out of the city at 11:55 am. We shopped until the last possible moment and quickly exited back to our “beyond the 5th ring” homes….so interesting to be part of this…

No cars were allowed to drive on Thursday, Friday or Saturday. No school buses could run. No gas stations were open. Everything was closed. As one of my vendors at the market said, “Nothing to do but watch TV and eat for 3 days.”    We watched the parade on the T.V. along with everyone else, as the parade was invitation only. The major street in between Tiananmen and the Forbidden City looked surreal – no cars, no people. We read that area businesses were closed due to security and that wireless internet and radio signals were shut down by the government. We noticed. We ventured out for a champagne and beer run on Odin, and we were literally the only people on the road. Kind of apocalyptic.

Sunday, today, the trucks are all coming back into the city after being banned for 3 days. The traffic is horrible and the markets are busy. Everyone is trying to get ready for tomorrow, which will be a very busy day, indeed. Cars can drive, kids can go back to school and all of the military presence is gone. To us, as foreigners, it seemed odd, but to the Chinese, it was a huge source of pride. A huge deal.

Living here continues to be very interesting to me as a person who grew up in a completely different environment…continuously blows my mind that the world can be so very different, depending on where you are at the moment.