Empty schedules are daunting,
The dark clouds hover.
The Chinese holidays are perhaps particularly bad for me: there's no sentiment attaching to them for me, no warming nostalgia. There's simply an irritating suspension of normal activities for the week.
Travel within China becomes next-to-impossible, because of the hordes of Chinese tourists. Even travelling around Beijing becomes unattractive, since all the parks, temples, museums, malls etc. are beset by throngs of people. Most foreigners with any money, any sense, quit the country for the whole week. The rest of us retreat into inertia, holing up in our apartments with a stack of books and DVDs.
Such unaccustomed idleness is not good for me. There are too many dark thoughts that crowd in on me when I have this kind of time on my hands. It's a quaint little paradox that what is supposed to be a time of celebration is for me, fairly regularly, the occasion of my biggest depression of the year.
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