While many Chinese people joke that they “work like a dog” because they are anxious about dropping out of the rat race, there is a tradition in some areas that people can legitimately “lie flat” once a year to ward off bad luck. The day is called tian chuan, or the day when the sky breaks. It usually falls on the 20th day of the first lunar month, and marks the day when the sky that Nuwa mended breaks once in a year. Nuwa is a mythological figure, a mother goddess who is said to have moulded the...