WildChina > WildChina > Preparations for Golden Week

The last week has been a busy and exciting one at Changqing Reserve. Everyone has been preparing for the ‘Golden Week’ holiday – from the Director to the girls who work in the hotel where I live. Similar to the night before Christmas, you can feel the festival atmosphere ready to burst forth.

 

Preparations for Golden Week
Changqing workers (Hu Yao & Wang Yu Bin) dressed up for concert

Experiencing festivals in China is amazing and energising – and has made me all too aware of the lack of tradition and folk law that I have as a white Australian. While we celebrate, among other days, the Queen of England’s birthday (Queens Birthday), the labour union movement resulting in an 8 hour workday (Labour Day), and a famous horse race??!! (The Melbourne Cup) – China celebrates romantic events such as the drowning of a patriotic poet (Dragon Boat Festival), the fateful night when a beautiful young girl ascended to the moon (Mid-Autumn Festival) and a day in spring when families join together to attend to the graves of deceased relatives (Tomb Sweeping Day). These festivals are full of history, story telling, special festival foods, firecrackers and fireworks, concerts and a sense of community and family that is an experience hard convey in words.

The Golden Week holiday we are currently preparing for is from October 1-7 and this year will include both the 60th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and also the Mid-Autumn Festival. Due to it being a very popular time for domestic travel (not for the faint hearted!), the Changqing Reserve staff working in Huayang will be too busy managing the Reserve and the influx of tourists to go home to their families. However we did receive a beautiful box full of delicious moon cakes, and also had a staff concert a couple of evenings ago featuring traditional songs and dances (including yours truly doing a dreadful rendition of ‘You are my sunshine’…hopefully not recorded and if so never to see the light of day, pardon the pun!)

 

Preparations for Golden Week
Changqing staff erecting new signs in the Reserve

If the weather during this holiday period is good, based upon last years figures there is the potential for us to be receiving as many as 2,000 Chinese tourists – approximately half our annual visitation in only one week! This of course presents problems with respect to eco-tourism and requires very careful planning and management. Preparation undertaken by staff here over the last few weeks has included signage construction (both large advertisement signs and small information signs), rubbish collection and positioning of temporary bins, road refurbishment, publishing of a new brochure, development of an information video, and perhaps most importantly communication to all staff of specific holiday procedures (such as safety patrolling, traffic management, police presence etc.). We look forward to receiving visitors here at Changqing, helping them to understand and briefly experience wild china and managing them as best we can during this week.

Happy Golden Week!

Note: I would like to make a formal apology for some incorrect information stated in my first blog posting. I am in fact 29, not 28 … I assure you, this slip-up was not intentional, however may reveal the depth of my denial leading to my 30th birthday!

2 Responses
  1. Kate

    I’ve subscribed to your blog and look forward to reading more…thanks for your eloquent insights Heather! Australians can learn so much from ancient and indigenous cultures.

Leave a Reply

We are using cookies to give you the best experience. You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in privacy settings.
AcceptPrivacy Settings

  • We use cookies to make your experience of our website better.

We use cookies to make your experience of our website better.

A cookie is a small file which asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and the cookie helps analyze web traffic or let you know when you visit a particular site. Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

We use traffic log cookies to identify which pages are being used. This helps us analyze data about web page traffic and improve our website in order to tailor it to customer needs. We only use this information for statistical analysis purposes and then the data is removed from the system.

Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better website, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.

You can choose to accept or decline cookies. Most web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. However, this may prevent you from taking full advantage of the website.

Detailed information about the use of cookies on this website is available by clicking on more information.