Well, then: Oops. What last month we said was going to happen, this month was made official. China has scrapped May holiday, one of its three Golden Weeks, and turned three traditional festivals into national holidays. Here's how your official 2008 Chinese holiday schedule now looks: New Year's Day: January 1Spring Festival: February 6,7 and 8 (Wednesday-Friday)Tomb Sweeping Day (Qingming Jie, 清明节): April 4 (Friday)Labor Day: May 1 (Thursday)Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwu Jie, 端午節): June......

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......

It is official...the golden week has finally hit Shanghai, and it is hitting us hard, with a multitude of music festivals. So for those of you who are taking the vacation serious and drinking so much you can't think straight, Shanghaiist is here to do the thinking for you. Feel free to print and paste the sample itinerary listed below to that one pair of underwear you plan on wearing for the entire week. After......

If, like us, you're stuck in Shanghai over the National Day holiday (hey, somebody's gotta give everyone else stuck in town something to read and entertain themselves with, right?), we suggest you stay right at home. Because if you haven't been around during any Golden Week, you won't know what a nightmare it is going to be out there. And the Shanghai Metro is already gearing itself up for a record National Day holiday season,......

The Chinese government is considering scrapping two of China's three "golden weeks". The proposal appears to have been drawn up by domestic tourism experts and if the guidelines are accepted, the weeklong May Day holiday would be shortened to one day and the National Day holiday to two days. Only the Lunar New Year golden week would be preserved. To make up for the lost holidays, three traditional Chinese festivals would be set aside as......

We report that The Shanghai Daily reported on a Xinmen Evening News report (in Chinese) that teenage abortions peaked during the May Golden Week holiday period. The article states that this mirrors a trend for all the Golden Week holidays, where students take time to recover from the procedure which would normally eat into study or internship responsibilities. The Shanghai Daily report quotes that 80 percent of the abortion patients were under the age......

Chinese blogger exposes a 1994 fire that killed 288 pupils as officials fled "A local education official who organised the song and dance performance, Kuang Li, locked herself in the toilet, keeping out children who suffocated, according to Chen's blog. Kuang was jailed for four years." China and Russia accused of arming Sudan "China and Russia are supplying arms to Sudan that are being used to fuel the violence in the Darfur region in violation......

For those of you, like us, who have yet to make Golden Week plans for the May holiday, the Guangxi provincial tourism ministry has one word for you: clowns. Actually two words: clown festival. If you have recently overcome your irrational fear of clowns borne from a certain 1990 Stephen King made-for-TV movie, you might want to schedule a trip to Liuzhou in early May to bear witness to China's first international clown festival. Xinhua......

4 million tourists flocked to Shanghai. Crowding People's Square, Nanjing Lu, and the Bund. And they spent a whooping RMB 2.7 billion, mainly on shopping. Meanwhile, locals watched skater exhibitionists, had near-death experiences snowboarding, checked out the flowers in Century Park, sang their heart away, went to their favorite bars, and, well, did their laundry. For more images of Shanghai during the Golden Week, click here. Special thanks to: theshanghaieye, D.POP, gtmojo, Jakob Montrasio, Pat1982,......

Is the estimated number of passengers who will travel by train during the "Golden Week". Our guess is that most of the tourists will end up here, in Nanjing Lu. Photo from spiky247. Taken on April 2006 using a Hasselblad camera. Shanghaiist now features a "Photo of the Day", daily pictures of life around the city. We want you to share how you see Shanghai. Simply post your photos on Flickr, tag them with "shanghaiist",......

Officials in Beijing deny ing rumors that 1 million migrants would be expelled from the capital during the Olympics. However, as we mentioned earlier, 50 of the 239 schools for migrant workers have been closed down recently -- in some cases by the police, en masse. On the brighter side, those that get to remain in Beijing will have a spiffy new light-rail system by 2008 to whisk them around from place to place!The......

Selected headlines from today's Metro Express, Shanghai's free weekday commuter paper: 胡锦涛主席启程出访五国Chairman Hu Jintao sets out to visit five countries, including 美利坚合众国 (the USA). Did you hear about the dinner at Bill Gates' house? 家乐福涉嫌卖假LV被索赔50万LV seeks RMB 500,000 in compensation from Shanghai Carrefour over suspected sale fake LV bags. 美国普利策新闻奖揭晓USA's Pulitzer Prizes announced. The "article" is simply a caption for a photo that won the Feature Photography prize, one of Todd Heisler's photographs of caskets......

Chinese holidays -- or "golden weeks" -- have always confused Shanghaiist. The "official" days always seem to be announced at the last minute (like less than two weeks before the actual holiday) even though based on past holidays you can pretty much guesstimate when the golden week will be. Adopting a "when in China" stance, many foreign companies in China wait until the last minute to tell employees what days they will actually have off.......

Shanghaiist has seen "countdown"-style traffic lights elsewhere in China, most-recently on our drive to Moganshan last weekend (it was our first time behind the wheel in China, and for the most part, despite some annoyances -- people using the shoulder as a lane, etc. -- it was fine). Anyway, the tick-tick-tick stopwatch-style lights Shanghai pedestrians have become accustomed to are now being tried out on the city's drivers, who, incidentally, are supposed to yield to......

After yesterday's confident announcement on China's ability to contain bird flu, Shanghaiist winced as we thought we heard rumbling overhead, and then we went straight to various sources searching for news of more bird flu outbreaks. The last time China tempted the gods made an announcement like this in November, Shanghaiist seems to recall the beginning of a rash of new outbreaks throughout the country. Just a day after yesterday's big announcement, China has reported......