You will get to see scenes like the one above on Nanjing Lu a lot less often from next year on. All those rumours that we've been hearing have been confirmed. The May Golden Week holiday is going to be cut down to one day, and this may happen as early as 2008. In the meanwhile, three more national holiday have been added: namely the Tomb-sweeping Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. This brings the total number of paid holidays up from 10 to 11. In the early days, festivals such as the Tomb-sweeping Festival were regarded as being too superstitious to have any place in the New China, so the move to put the "Chinese" back into China's national holidays is to be applauded. However, with just one Golden Week left, we can't imagine what mad rush awaits us next October, with Chinese families all postponing their holiday plans to the National Day holiday week.

Photo by Montrasio International