Weekendist: Cuisine festivals, creativity workshops, charities and more!
Extra! Extra! Police and prostitutes, journalists and propaganda departments, and kids and condoms
Time to stock up on face masks
Olympic condoms are faster, higher, stronger
Shanghai Tattoo now selling Chinese indie rock CDs
Ok folks, it’s official! Now that the State Council has released its 2009 holiday schedule, we can start our planning and make full use of the precious vacation time for the coming year.
The intricacies of slapping on an extra day or two to really stretch out that 3-day weekend can sometimes be tricky. Stay local or jaunt to the near abroad? How does one overcome the teaming mass of humanity clustered at the airports and train stations? More importantly, How mad would your boss really be if you stuck ALL your vacation time right after that very meaty 8-day break in October? We’ll leave that to the tricky dicks out there.
It’s been rather common for office workers to start the work week on a Sunday after 3 continuous public holidays. Of course, not all companies abide by this schedule, and not everyone gets to take Saturdays or any time off at all.
New Year: January 1st (Thu) - 3rd (Sat). Back to work on January 4th (Sun.).
Lunar New Year: January 25th (Sun) - 31st (Sat). Back to work on February 1st (Sun).
Qing Ming Festival: April 4th (Sat) – 6th (Mon).
Labor Day: May 1st (Fri) – 3rd (Sun).
Dragon Boat Festival: May 28th (Thu) – 30th (Sat). Back to work on May 31st (Sun).
National Day and Mid-Autumn: October 1st (Tue) – 8th (Thu). Back to work on October 9th (Fri)
As you can see, there are no public holidays from June to September. This means if you have no planned vacation during this time, it will be a very long (and hot) summer.
Source: "Red Sea of Tourists" by stelzer
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
post to facebook
I see a couple of oddities in the holiday schedule.
1) The Dragon Boat festival is May 28-30th, with the official holiday on the 28 (Thurs), the 30 (Sat) as a normal weekend), and the 31 (sun) weekend shifted to the 29 (Fri). What do you mean about this February 29th business?
2) The October holiday is now 8 days! (Kind of, it's still 3 days and we have to sacrifice 5 weekend days to "earn" this extended holiday)
oh, I get it after reading the article. They are combining the Mid-Autumn Festival with the October holiday to make an 8 day holiday. If they were separated, it would have been a 3 day holiday and a 7 holiday, respectively.
I don't know how I feel about this.
When did the State Council pronounce that the leap year would be addressed with April 31, rather than the usual Feb 29?
I think the State Council can only regulate and manipulate time zones and people's lives, not the world calender. Yet.
Lomsaku: I've corrected the mistakes. Thanks for pointing it out, must have been on fumes when I wrote that.
And yes, it's not some crazy bonanza of holidays when you break it down.
Shangers: As I said to Lomsaku, I've corrected that. But it'll be a matter of time before the government magically creates new leap years. :)
January 25th is a Sunday on my calender!
Yes, the 25th IS Sunday. You must be new here in China as the gov gives us days we already have off as part of the "advertised holiday". But seriously the reason they do it is more to address blue collar work around teh nation where factories run 24/7 and if they did not force a closure for the official holidays, there would be grief comiing from all sides. SO weekends are listed. As you can tell by the "return-to-work" days, weekends are NOT off limits to being scheduled for work.
Oei vey. Corrected! :)