2009 National Holiday Schedule

By Jian Shuo Wang on 2009-09-29 23:04 · Chinese Holidays

In China, it has formed a tradition that every national holiday from now on will be from Oct 1 to Oct 7 - 7 days. This year, since there is a Middle Moon Festival during that period, the holiday is extended to 8 days.

So, the quick schedule is: Oct 1 to Oct 8 = holiday.

The complicated schedule is about the date before and after it. Since the holiday is just 3 days, and they tried to leverage the 4 weekends before and after the 3 holiday to make it up to 7 days, the national wide schedule is very wired:

Sept 25 Friday Weekday

Sept 26 Saturday Weekend

Sept 27 Sunday Weekday

Sept 28 Monday Weekday

Sept 29 Tuesday Weekday

Sept 30 Wednesday Weekday

Oct 1 Thursday Holiday

Oct 2 Friday Holiday

Oct 3 Saturday Holiday

Oct 4 Sunday Holiday

Oct 5 Monday Holiday

Oct 6 Tuesday Holiday

Oct 7 Wednesday Holiday

Oct 8 Thursday Holiday

Oct 9 Friday Weekday

Oct 10 Saturday Weekday

Oct 11 Sunday Weekend

Oct 12 Monday Weekday

Please note the two days marked as bold - people need to come to work on Saturday or Sunday.

THE Parade

The Parade will happen on 10:00 AM, October 1, 2009. I doubt any other media besides CCTV 4 will broadcast it outside China. Putting all the controversial discussion aside, the parade itself should be nice to watch.

9 Comments
I totally agree that It will be spectacular to watch the troops march accross Tian An Man for inspection by the officials. I was in China for the past weeks and every morning CCTV have some interview program in the training camp to show how the troops are preparing for the "BIG MARCH". Lot of hard work, hat off to the troops. I hope there will be some complete broadcast or DVD avaiable later.
— loretta · 2009-09-30 01:02
I don't think this kind of a holiday schedule could work in the US. Everybody would complain about something different. It is actually impressive that China can implement something like this nationwide by decreeing from "those above." I guess it helps too that people are used to having a lot of holiday around National Day.

A popular time for long vacations here is stringing together Christmas (2 days vacation), New Years (1 day vacation), and the before/after weekends. But people usually just do that by using ~3 paid personal vacation days during the work week between the 2 holidays.
— shan · 2009-09-30 02:23
The reason China can implement these holidays is twofold:

1. Very few jobs in China have annual leave. That means the 2 weeks of public holidays they get (May 1, Oct 1) are all the holidays most workers get all year.

2. Being a one party state makes things run efficiently when it comes to decrees from above as there is no public consultation/discourse.

To me there's nothing impressive about that.
— Dezza · 2009-09-30 12:19
Years ago, the Office of the State Department will announce the holiday schedule few weeks before the holiday, and everyone is pending their plan according to their schedule. Now, they fixed the holiday date, and change the surrounding days... Anyway, they can just make an announcement, and 1.3 billion people just follow.
— Jian Shuo Wang · 2009-09-30 12:39
My question is: why can't they make these announcements years in advance to facilitate business and personal travel plans? They already know when the lunar new year will be, when May 1, Oct 1 will be. Does it require that much consideration that they can only make an announcement about the surrounding days a few weeks (months) in advance?
— Dezza · 2009-09-30 13:08
@Dezza, because everything changes so far, no one days what is going to happen the next year. People (including those who make decisions) are not sure whether we will have 3 days of National holiday the next year. The May holiday, for example, was shrink to one day this year, but who knows the next year.
— Jian Shuo Wang · 2009-09-30 15:08
We are in the middle of the busy season, suddenly the goverment say: everything will be off for 8 days. This kind of holiday has very bad influence on our work. It screwed up our schedule and habit.
— Mike · 2009-09-30 15:35
There are many companies that don't follow the government schedule and only have 1 -4 October off work.
— Anna · 2009-10-02 15:12
WJS: With the CCP, they have the power to set dates well in advance WITHOUT any public debate.

I'm not sure what 'everything changes so far, nobody knows what is going to happen next year' really means. We know years in advance when May 1, Oct 1, Lunar new year is, so why can't they just go about setting the dates a few years in advance? "Who knows the next year?" the government knows! We don't know if the sun is going to rise tomorrow, next week, next year, but we assume it is going to appear on time and on schedule...?
— Dezza · 2009-10-08 09:06