The Never-Ending Maze of Adjusted Holidays

Li Weiming stared at the calendar. The bright red characters for "Spring Festival" were surrounded by dense annotations of "adjusted holidays," like a solitary island encircled by an endless cage. He felt a wave of dizziness, as if the entire world were spinning, the dates like runaway horses, galloping towards an unknowable black hole.

"This year's Spring Festival... how do we take it off?" he muttered to himself, his voice as dry and raspy as sandpaper.

His wife, busy in the kitchen, shouted without turning her head, "How else? Just follow the notice from above! Adjust here, make up there, it's the same every year!"

"Above..." Li Weiming repeated the word, feeling a surge of inexplicable fear. Who was "above"? Was it the A4 sheet of paper posted on the bulletin board? Was it the eternally blurry face of the spokesperson on TV? Or was it... an invisible force, like a spider web, enveloping everything, leaving no escape?

He opened his phone and searched for "cancel adjusted holidays." The screen filled with countless news articles, comments, and suggestions, like a swarm of buzzing flies, but he couldn't find a clear exit. He clicked on an "expert recommendation," which was filled with obscure terminology and ambiguous analysis. The final conclusion was: "...taking into account various factors, the current adjusted holiday system still has its rationality..."

Li Weiming felt a wave of despair. Rationality? He remembered last year's Spring Festival. In order to piece together those seven days of vacation, he worked eight days in a row, then squeezed into the crowded train station for more than ten hours, arriving home completely exhausted. The so-called "vacation" was just continuing to be exhausted in another place.

He put down his phone and walked to the window. Outside, the sky was gray, and the skyscrapers stood silently like giant tombstones. He suddenly remembered a quote from Borges: "Time is a garden of forking paths."

Adjusted holidays, like this forking path, seem to give you a choice, but in reality, they trap you in an even larger maze. You think you can freely arrange your time, but you find that everything has already been arranged. You are just following a predetermined route, going around in circles in the maze.

He began to dream. In his dream, he arrived at a huge office, filled with officials with blurry faces. They were holding a meeting, discussing how to adjust next year's holidays. On the wall of the conference room hung a huge map of China, covered with dense small flags, each with a date written on it. The officials held long pointers, moving the flags on the map, as if performing an ancient witchcraft ritual.

Li Weiming wanted to ask them, "Why must we have adjusted holidays?" But his throat felt like it was blocked by something, and he couldn't make a sound. He could only watch helplessly as those flags were moved around, forming new, even more complicated mazes.

He woke up in a cold sweat. Outside the window, the sky was already bright. His wife had already made breakfast and was urging him to eat quickly and go to work.

"Today... what day is it?" he asked.

"What day is it? Are you confused? Today is Monday, a make-up workday for the adjusted holiday!" His wife looked at him in surprise.

Li Weiming mechanically ate his breakfast, his mind blank. He felt like a prisoner trapped in a time maze, never able to find an exit. He began to doubt whether the so-called "vacation" was just a carefully designed scam, a shore that could never be reached.