As alert readers of The Nanjinger may have noticed, the coming of December in Nanjing is marked by the traditional observance of the annual Pyjama Festival, from now until some time in April next year.
While many a foreign man in November takes to the avoidance of shaving for a month, in China, and Nanjing in particular, the following month of December is marked by people taking similar leave of their senses, this time to turn around all convention as to the wearing of padded clothing.
The early missionaries who first came to China around the time of the Crusades returned to Europe mystified and perplexed. “Everything in China is upside down”, they told their kings.
They may have had a point. In many a country, pyjamas are worn at night in the solitude of one’s sleeping quarters, with another human for the lucky ones. Observers of the annual pajama festival in Nanjing, on the other hand, don their fluffy cosy companions outside and in broad daylight.
Another tradition of the Pyjama Festival is the wearing of thermal, down jackets indoors and particularly in bedrooms, although this is a much-less-reported-upon phenomenon, for obvious reasons of privacy.
The Pyjama Festival is for some, simply a way to keep warm, for others a homage to the God of Fleece, and for others perhaps just a bit of fun. After all, what could be better than not having to get dressed in the morning?
Nevertheless, as with much in China, the often seemingly mundane can carry a serious undertone. Authorities are less than enamored by the festival; the country’s citizens decked out in multi-coloured fluff hardly being the image of the state-of-the-art nation they want to project to the world.
Either way, the missionaries would have surely been pleased.
