Flummoxed foreigners- Chinese Spring Festival, no fun for some (2)

Carrying on caring

It's not at all surprising that there are around 500 nursing assistants at a Tier-Three hospital in Shanghai. Unlike nurses, they carry out the more manual care tasks, bathing and cleaning patients, helping them go to the bathroom or massaging them.

But during the Spring Festival, many of these staff members, almost all non-locals, plan to go home. "We've trained these staff and normally each one looks after up to four patients. But during the Spring Festival, many ask for leave. They often say their homes are being built, or family members are sick, some reasons that they have to return. We can't stop them," a manager from a city hospital explained.

Anhui native Liu is among the minority who will stay at work at Huashan Hospital. She usually looks after four elderly patients around the clock but said the work was easy. "During the Spring Festival, I will have to take care of 10 instead of four. I will be happy if I get to sleep just a few hours at night," Liu said. After the festival, she will take a few days off to go back home to see her family.

But some families of patients at the hospitals here are not happy with the arrangements believing that the sudden increase in the number of patients the nursing assistants will have to handle will reduce the quality of their service and care. "It will be hard to get staff to help during night," said Liu, who is very aware of the problems. Her own father has just had pancreatic surgery. "One family in our ward has hired a nursing assistant from an agency. But this is really expensive - 150 yuan ($24) per day and the money has to be tripled for the first to the third day of the Chinese lunar year." Normally it costs around 60 yuan a day to hire a hospital nursing assistant.

Flummoxed foreigners

Like the nursing assistants and street cleaners, there will be many others working through the holidays, like the staff on key construction projects and staff at power and water stations. While these few will work and most city families will spend time together, many foreigners in the city have different approaches.

For foreigners, a first Chinese New Year Festival in Shanghai can be a confusing period. After the initial night of fireworks and explosions, which suggest that the city has become a brilliantly colored war zone, the next day government departments, many shops and businesses are closed and there are remarkably few people on the quiet streets.

We recommend:
Top 10 satisfying tourist cities of 2012	Old photos: Legendary Asian singer Teresa Teng	Wow! Cutest moments of animals
Glamor actresses in 'Legend of Zhen Huan'	Guides for Snake Year temple fairs in Beijing	Top 9 illusionary photos in 2012
Rare photos of global superstar Li Na	Female stars with most beautiful, shapely legs	Hilarious photos of cute babies