China Enters National-Day Holiday
Seven days off – that's what Chinese workers get to celebrate their National Day - October 1.
The National Day holiday is one of the three major holidays for the Chinese, along with Labor Day (May 1) and Spring Festival celebrations. The significance of the New Year, in contrast, has fallen somewhat since it falls in between National Day and Spring Festival (lunar New Year). Given that Spring Festival is considered an occasion for family reunion and that it falls in either January or February on the solar calendar when it is still rather cold in much of China, the Labor Day and National Day holidays have become favorite times for the Chinese to travel around China. In recent years this resulted in heavy congestion at some of the hot tourist sites and vacationing resorts, and has prompted suggestions that the Chinese government should set up a system to replace or dilute the week-long holidays anchored on May 1 and October 1. It has been proposed, for instance, that people should be given the option of taking extended paid leaves at any time during the year, so as to spread out tourist traffic – and money – across the year.
It was on October 1, 1949, that the People's Republic of China was founded.
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