Here’s why Chinese workers are wearing ‘no-face’ masks

Staffs Wear No-Face Masks To Reduce Pressure During Working Time In Handan
HANDAN, CHINA - JULY 14: (CHINA OUT) Staff wear No-Face masks during working hours at a service company on July 14, 2015 in Handan, Hebei Province of China. As a service company, its staffs must smile to customers everyday. On "No-Face Day", the staffs wore No-Face masks to reduce pressure and relax themselves. No-Face is a silent masked creature who has no facial expressions in Japanese animated fantasy film "Spirited Away". (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
Photograph by ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images

Like Casual Fridays? Try “No Face” day.

On Tuesday, a handful of service companies in Handan, a city in China’s Hebei province, encouraged workers to wear masks to work so that they could relax their faces instead of smiling all day. Customers were greeted with a sea of Guy Fawkes faces and masks imitating the character “No Face” in the 2001 anime movie Spirited Away. The mask day was designed to “reduce pressure during working time,” according to China FotoPress.

In China, workplace pressure is a mounting concern among companies and the government. According to the China Youth Daily, about 600,000 Chinese people die from overwork each year. And while that statistic might not be trustworthy, its publication in the state-run newspaper means the government is concerned about the prevalence of overwork-related deaths. There’s even a word for this kind of death: guolaosi. Many labor experts in China agree that Chinese white-collar workers far outwork the legal limits on overtime each week.

Despite the health risks, working to the point of extreme is still lauded by many in Chinese society. When Chinese bank regulator Li Jianhua died at his desk last year finishing a report, his employer, the China Banking Regulatory Commission, released a statement saying he was a “model for party members and cadres.”