Text: Yan Ruoxi
Editor|Yan Ruoxi
sequence
Recall that 16 years ago, whenever May Day came, workers across the country would be full of expectations, because May Day at that time was a real "Golden Week";
The seven-day vacation is enough for a week of relaxation.
But all this beauty came to an end in 2008.
The source of this earth-shaking change can be traced back to the reform proposal put forward by Professor Cai Jiming, an economist at Tsinghua University.
It turned out that it was Professor Cai Jiming's proposal that made the country adjust the May Day holiday;
Since then, the seven-day "Golden Week" that was celebrated by the whole people has become history.
Rewrite the May Day holiday
"The May Day holiday, in fact, three days is enough.
These words came from the mouth of a gentleman named Cai Jiming in 2006.
Professor Cai Jiming from Tsinghua University leads his research team;
An earth-shattering holiday adjustment plan was proposed to the relevant state departments - they argued;
The original May 17 holiday is too concentrated and too long, and it is recommended to cancel it;
And this part of the holiday is dispersed to traditional festivals such as the Dragon Boat Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Fast forward to 2008, when this suggestion was adopted, and the state officially decided to shorten the May Day holiday from the original seven days to three days.
However, Professor Cai did not stop there, he also aimed at another big holiday in the hearts of the people - the National Day, and intended to promote the adjustment of his seven-day long holiday through new research.
Unexpectedly, Professor Cai's series of actions attracted huge controversy and attacks on the Internet.
On a well-known social platform, netizens specially established a "Cai Jiming Bar", and many netizens poured in to express fierce criticism and abuse, and some even leaked Professor Cai's personal information;
As a result, its communication channels are almost paralyzed.
Overwhelmed, Professor Cai chose to sue the platform and eventually received 100,000 yuan in compensation.
Despite this, Professor Cai still felt very aggrieved, saying in public: "I just made suggestions, and I was not the one who really made the decision;
The attacks on me personally are very unfair.
Some netizens responded that considering that professors enjoy 78 days off every year, 75 days of winter and summer vacations, and at least 15 days of paid leave, plus other statutory holidays, it is almost only necessary to work for half a year;
For him, small long holidays such as May 1st and 11th are really meaningless.
But the rhetoric did not quell the public discussion and emotional confrontation over the holiday adjustment.
Behind the holiday reform proposals
What kind of person is Cai Jiming who dares to put forward a plan for the reform of the leave system that may anger everyone in front of the people across the country? Uncovering his work history, he found that he did not have much practical experience in the workplace.
He did not immediately enter social work after graduation, but chose to further his studies at Henan University to pursue a master's degree in economics.
After obtaining a master's degree, Cai Jiming joined the Institute of Economic Research of Nankai University as a research assistant for two years.
Undoubtedly, it planted a deep seed of academic research for the future.
After that, he naturally pursued a doctorate in Nankai, specializing in economics, knowing that the employment path of this major was relatively narrow.
After graduating from his Ph.D., Cai Jiming stayed in the university to teach, and was gradually promoted from a lecturer to an associate professor.
Then to the professor, it only took five years;
It shows his profound academic foundation and teaching ability.
In 1999, at the age of 43, he was already a responsible professor at the Institute of Economics of Tsinghua University, and also served as a doctoral supervisor, supervising a group of graduate students to carry out scientific research activities.
Such a career achievement is not without a thumbs up.
After years of dedicated research in the field of economics, Cai Jiming is eager to contribute to the development of the country.
In 2006, he led a research group to submit a bold reform plan to the Central Committee for Promoting Democracy.
The plan proposes to cancel the original "May Day Golden Week" holiday and split its holidays into traditional Chinese festivals such as Qingming and Dragon Boat Festival.
Cai Jiming's proposal for this initiative is not a whim, but behind his in-depth research, analysis and thinking.
Seven days to three days behind the consideration
In the eyes of Professor Cai Jiming, the disadvantages of the long-term seven-day holiday in the mainland obviously outweigh the advantages.
During the long holiday, people across the country travel intensively, resulting in great traffic pressure;
The highway is full of traffic, and the major scenic spots are overcrowded;
It has seriously affected the normal traffic order and business operations.
Professor Cai pointed out that in this situation, the seven-day long holiday is spread out to other traditional festivals, which is conducive to alleviating many problems caused by the peak of holiday tourism.
Despite the public outcry at the time, many people strongly opposed the cancellation of the seven-day holiday, after all, it has become a part of Chinese people's lives.
It carries many beautiful collective memories.
However, the voice of rational analysis eventually prevailed.
At the end of 2007, the State Council issued an announcement that since 2008;
The May Day holiday has been adjusted from seven days to three days.
As soon as this news came out, it was like a bomb detonating public opinion, and many people pointed their dissatisfaction at Professor Cai Jiming.
In the face of doubts and accusations, Professor Cai expressed his apologies in an interview;
At the same time, he insisted that his advice was based on professional considerations, and he believed that the longer the holiday season, the better;
The key lies in rational and scientific arrangement.
"Imagine if everyone traveled at the same time;
Not only will it overwhelm the transportation system and the accommodation industry, but it will also affect factory production and business operations. ”
Looking back on Professor Cai Jiming's suggestion, it is indeed not unreasonable.
During the long holiday, the mainland transportation system is indeed facing severe challenges, and the scenic spots are even more overwhelmed.
In addition, many important enterprises and factories have also been forced to suspend production, resulting in certain economic losses.
Although Professor Cai originally planned to make adjustments even for the 11th long holiday, in the end, only the May Day holiday was changed.
Still, the change has left many people feeling frustrated;
It also made Professor Cai bear huge pressure from public opinion in the days that followed.
Subjected to online violence over holiday reform proposals
mentioned the "holiday predator" Cai Jiming, because of his proposal for the reform of the holiday system, it attracted countless netizens to criticize and write, and even a special area called "Cai Jiming" appeared on Baidu Tieba;
It attracted a large number of users to abuse and attack him, accusing him of "stealing" everyone's vacation.
Unable to endure the continuous cyberbullying, Cai Jiming took Baidu to court in 2010 and demanded that Baidu shut down "Cai Jiming";
and claimed a total of more than 2.1 million yuan for moral damages and rights protection fees.
It is understood that since its establishment at the end of 2007, "Cai Jiming's Bar" has been filled with more than 3,000 insulting remarks against Cai Jiming, including extremely vicious personal attacks;
For example, maliciously changing his name and mocking him as "Cai Jiming" and "Cai Calling Beast"; some people conducted human flesh searches on him, disclosing his phone number, email address and other personal information; and some people even uploaded photos of him;
With the words "Cai Jiming's posthumous photo"; what is even more excessive is that some people cursed and insulted his whole family.
Cai Jiming printed out the insulting content in Tieba, and the entire 1,775 pages of material fully showed the huge mental pressure he was under.
As early as May 2009, he asked a friend to negotiate with Baidu, demanding that Tieba be closed immediately and that the abusive content be removed, but Baidu did not give a clear reply.
Subsequently, the friend tried to apply to become a bar owner in order to clean up the infringing posts on his own, but he was also refused.
At the trial scene, Cai Jiming said that due to online violence;
His own family suffered greatly, and his daughter did not dare to admit her fatherhood;
The wife also concealed her marital status from the outside world.
He believes that his right to reputation, portrait, name and privacy have been seriously infringed, and insists that Baidu close Tieba, publicly apologize and compensate 2.1 million yuan.
He said that the amount of compensation was only symbolic, and as a professor at Tsinghua University, he had never been so humiliated.
In the first-instance judgment, the Haidian District Court of Beijing found that Baidu, as the operator of Tieba, was not obliged to review each post one by one, and only needed to do a good job of "prior warning" and "post-event supervision".
Considering that Baidu quickly deleted the infringing information and prevented the publication of new infringing content after receiving Cai Jiming's lawyer's letter, it was determined that Baidu did not bear the infringement liability.
As for the appeal for the closure of "Cai Jiming's Bar", the court held that Cai Jiming had become the object of public discussion due to the issue of national holiday reform, based on the principles of public opinion supervision and freedom of speech;
The public should be allowed to express their views in a variety of ways, believing that the use of "Cai Jiming" to name Tieba is only pointing to the focus of public opinion;
His right to name was not violated, so the request to close the post bar was denied.
Cai Jiming was dissatisfied with the judgment that "Baidu does not need to compensate" and appealed.
The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court reversed the judgment in the second instance, holding that Baidu failed to take measures in a timely manner after receiving Cai Jiming's complaint, and was negligent in performing its post-event management duties, and should bear corresponding tort liability;
The final judgment was that Baidu compensated Cai Jiming 100,000 yuan.
Pick another sensitive topic: I want to cancel the "Eleventh" Golden Week
In the face of the storm of public opinion caused by the adjustment of the May Day holiday, Professor Cai Jiming did not flinch.
In 2014, he once again set off a heated discussion, putting forward the idea of canceling the "National Day" Golden Week.
He believes that in the context of the gradual promotion and implementation of the paid leave system in the mainland, the National Day statutory holiday can be reduced to 1 day;
The remaining two statutory holidays will be allocated to the Lantern Festival and the Double Ninth Festival respectively, so as to realize the optimal allocation of holiday resources.
However, this view of Professor Cai has not been widely shared.
Many netizens questioned whether most companies have really implemented the paid leave system in reality.
Is there an effective regulatory mechanism to ensure the rights of employees, and when will paid leave be universally implemented?
Some netizens said bluntly: "Professor Cai, can you first solve these three practical problems and then talk about canceling the 11th long holiday?"
Although Professor Cai Jiming insists that the cancellation of the National Day holiday is based on long-term considerations, in the face of huge social pressure;
He shelved the proposal for the time being.
At the same time, the relevant departments have also noticed the emotional reaction of the public, realizing that if the National Day holiday is cancelled again, it may cause a greater public backlash.
Therefore, this proposal was not put into practice.
Rest storms
At the beginning of 2024, starting from the Spring Festival, many people feel that this year's holiday arrangements will fall into the "curse of compensatory rest".
During the Qingming Festival, the topic of holiday gradually heated up, until the arrival of May Day, a "holiday craze" broke out completely;
The topic of "the holiday turned April into a single holiday" instantly rushed to the hot search, and even the official media couldn't help but criticize it.
Netizens carefully calculated the accounts, although there are nominally five days of holiday on May Day, in fact, two of them are weekends themselves;
The other two days are exchanged for compensatory holidays, which is equivalent to actually only one day off in the true sense of the word.
What's even more frustrating is that the holiday also leads to a longer working day before and after the holiday, increasing the intensity of work;
aroused strong dissatisfaction among netizens.
After the holiday arrangements for the second half of the year were released, everyone found that almost every holiday was firmly controlled, and there must be seven or eight consecutive working days on holidays.
What really makes netizens crazy is not that May Day has been reduced from seven days to five days, but this way of disrupting the original rhythm of life.
The word "holiday office" began to enter the public eye in 2000, and over the years, it has been violently complained by netizens because of its various patchwork holiday arrangements.
The most dramatic scene occurred in 2014, due to the dispute over the holiday arrangement on Chinese New Year's Eve, netizens called the holiday office to "check the post";
So much so that the phone call for the holiday office was almost blown up.
In the end, it was decided to abolish the holiday office and only retain it in seven provinces;
The rest of the provinces were transferred to the local tourism authorities.
Although the original intention of the holiday adjustment was to encourage tourism consumption, in practice, it seems to be counterproductive, and it has increased the work pressure of many migrant workers.
made many netizens sigh: "You can't have a real and happy holiday, why do you have to scrape together?"
The May Day holiday under the compensatory leave system
In the blink of an eye, the five-day May Day holiday system has been implemented for 16 years.
This seems to be a five-day holiday, but in essence, it is just a borrowing of the normal two days off on the weekend.
Although it was two days less than the previous seven days, most people were able to accept it.
However, with the introduction of the compensatory holiday policy, the five-day holiday has also begun to change its taste.
One day a week, the next week you have to work nine days in a row.
Today's May Day holiday is more like a patchwork from the rest time that workers should have.
The first "genius" in China to propose a leave plan makes people wonder how to evaluate it.
At the national level, the compensatory leave system does bring some advantages: on the one hand, the overall working hours are ensured through compensatory leave;
On the other hand, long holidays have a significant boost to the economy.
Relevant studies have shown that long holidays can increase the travel consumption of low-income groups by an average of 120 yuan, and high-income groups can even increase their travel expenditure by nearly 500 yuan.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the long holiday economy, the huge population base makes the economic value of the holiday immeasurable, especially in the context of the three-year epidemic that has hit the tourism industry hard;
The long holiday is an important means to help the tourism industry accelerate its recovery.
However, in this economic game, the emotions of migrant workers are often ignored.
No matter how many days of overtime, how hard the work, or the plight of unemployment due to the pandemic, it seems to be irrelevant.
Today's migrant workers are like bricks that can be moved wherever they are needed;
sacrificing the original rest time in exchange for the so-called vacation is like a cow with a collar;
It is necessary to work hard and bear additional consumption pressure.
Whenever the holiday is approaching, the dissatisfaction in the hearts of migrant workers will erupt in a concentrated manner, and the topic of the May Day holiday will always remain hot.
The Internet is full of complaints about "either you have a holiday or you don't have a holiday", "the holiday is a joke", "calling for the restoration of the original holiday;
Boycott the "Resist Holiday" voice after another.