Adults across the nation reclaimed Children's Day as their own and deployed the international festival to celebrate their own inner child this weekend.

Hundreds of employees in the Jing'an district of Shanghai played childhood games at a gymnasium on Saturday, the Shanghai Morning Post reported.

Sporting the proud red scarves of the Young Pioneers, they performed gymnastics to radio music and played games including the traditional "eagle and chickens."

Participants reportedly enjoyed reliving their innocent memories and regarded the activity as effective for relieving pressure, the report said.

Dozens of people born in the 1980s celebrated the approaching festival together by playing games, singing old songs and watching old cartoons in Lanzhou, Gansu Province on Saturday.

Organizer Dai Peng told the China News Service the activity aimed to dig up the childlike heart of young people.

"We are confronted by complicated societal relations and pressure after stepping into society," Dai was quoted as saying. "The games we played at an early age can purify our heart and help get back the purest part we had."

Internet users suggested how to spend the holiday including drinking with a feeding bottle or even jumping on the bed in shoes.

With an improving material environment, most such young people did not suffer the serious difficulties of their parents in childhood, said Zheng Ruoling, an education expert at Xiamen University, making them more fragile and vulnerable to pressure from modern-day society.

"That's why some seem to rebel against growing up," she told the Global Times.

Adults' unwillingness to grow up has created a nice little niche market for his shop, an anonymous owner of an un-named shop told the Changchun-based New Culture View in Jilin Province.

Clothes with cartoon images are more popular in the approach to Children's Day, he explained to the paper.

The daily stress of modern life drives adults to seek out their happy, trouble-free childhood, said a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "I think the move also reflects youths' higher sense of happiness and more optimistic attitude toward life," said Li Yinhe.

Shao Hui, 28, watched a cartoon film and exchanged gifts with her best friend on Sunday.

"Celebrating the day is just an excuse," Shao told the Global Times. "Actually, we use it as a way to create some fun in our dour lives."