Maximising Fun Days: China’s 2014 National Holiday’s Proposal

Maximising Fun Days: China’s 2014 National Holiday’s Proposal
Dec 17, 2013 By eChinacities.com

Editor’s note: For a country that works as hard as it does, China puts a great deal of importance on holidays. And yet, the system by which holidays are implemented is an arcane and convoluted process, full of graphs and charts. You don’t really know which days you’ll get off until about a week before, especially when ‘make-up’ days come into play.

And yet, change is maybe in the air. The government recently gave the people the chance to vote on China’s 2014 National Holiday’s Proposal or as we are calling it ‘The reallocation of resources to provide for the maximization of citizenry fun days’ proposal. Though, as always in China, even though 2014 is only weeks away it still remains to be seen if the popular choice, as voted by the people, will in fact be implemented.

A study was recently undertaken to determine how the general public would like national holidays to be rescheduled. The results show that the majority supported preserving the seven day long holiday schedule for Spring Festival and National Week. There was also a great deal of support for increasing time off for Spring Festival and reinstating the May 1 Golden Week. Of course, it is still unclear whether these recommendations will come into effect in 2014.

No.3 plan to preserve the 7-day National Week holiday has received the most support

The study gave citizens three different arrangements of holiday schedule to choose from. And the results of the study show that the No. 3 proposal to retain the 7-day National Week holiday received the most support; next in popularity was the No. 1 proposal, while the No. 2 proposal received the least amount of support.

There were many different internet platforms hosting the survey and the No. 3 proposal gained the most support across the board: 59.4% on the China News Service, 55.47% on the Phoenix Network, 56.6% on NetEase, 52.54% by Sohu participants, and 49.9% by voters on Sina.

Details of the No. 3 Proposal

If China’s 2014 national holiday No. 3 proposal were to be taken up then the New Year will not start off with a bang because as stated in the No. 3 proposal, “any holiday that falls on a Wednesday will not be transferred to another day, but will instead have holidays implemented on that same day”; sadly New Year 2014 falls on a Wednesday and so the holiday will only consist of one day.

According to this proposal what would the other national holidays look like? Well Chinese New Year and National Day holidays will be scheduled as such: “Spring Festival will consist of 3 days and will ‘borrow’ the neighboring Saturday and Sunday to become a full 7-day long holiday. National Day celebrations will consist of 3 days and will also ’borrow’ the neighboring Saturday and Sunday to become a 7-day long holiday with a fixed date of October 1 until October 7.” However, because they will need to reschedule work days to do so, the work schedule after Spring Festival or before National Week holiday may consist of having to work a 9 day work week.

Another stipulation of the No. 3 proposal is: “(holidays) landing on a Saturday or Sunday will be compensated with a holiday arranged on the following Monday.” Looking forward in 2014, Tomb Sweeping festival occurs on April 5, a Saturday; Dragon Boat festival occurs on June 2, a Monday, and Mid-Autumn Festival occurs on September 8, also a Monday. Meaning that work days will not be rescheduled to compensate and as such all three holidays will become mini 3 days holidays.


Source: Dai Luo

Additionally, the No.3 proposal stipulated that “(festivals) falling on a Tuesday or Thursday will ‘borrow’ the day off from the adjacent Saturday or Sunday and be rescheduled as a three day holiday.” Since Labor Day (May 1) next year occurs on a Thursday, and so the holiday may last until May 3 with a six day work week following, starting on the Sunday.

However, we have been told that China’s 2014 national holidays won’t actually be announced until the start of each month. A spokesperson for the National Tourism Agency said in a press conference that it is not confirmed whether or not the holiday schedule will follow the No. 3 proposals favored by the survey.

Calls for Spring Festival to be Extended, Reinstate the May 1 Golden Week

Many experts and netizens believe that conducting the survey itself shows progress but were also quick to state that the No. 3 proposal is unlikely to satisfy all as everyone will still be losing out on the May 1 Golden Week. Proposals laid out in No. 3 were just the best of a the three, rather than being the best.

There remains many who would like to see the Spring Festival holiday extended and the May 1 Golden Week holiday reinstated. Netizens state that Spring Festival is China’s most traditional and important festival, and a single week is not enough time off to satisfy the needs of people going back to their hometowns and reuniting with family. Most would like to see it extended until Lantern Festival. In addition many believe reinstating the May 1 Golden Week would help to alleviate the problems brought about by the peak rush of tourists that coincide with the National Day holiday.

Expert Opinion

“What Chinese people lack the most is a long holiday,” said Liu Simin, a specially-commissioned researcher at the Tourist Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Liu went on to say that No. 3 proposal received the majority support because it retained two 7 day holidays.

Extending the Spring Festival holiday and reinstituting the May 1 Golden Week would increase the total number of days off each year. However, according to current laws and regulations, Chinese law only permits a total of 11 days to be used for vacations and holidays. Therefore, this transfer of work days for days off under the existing laws can only be completed via technical adjustments; and so, netizens could only express that they were not satisfied with moving their holidays, and not be able to express their requests to extend Spring Festival or reinstate the May 1 holiday.

In regards to how to solve the problem of Chinese-style holidays, the prescription that experts give is to appropriately lengthen the number of long holidays, to speed up the implementation of paid holiday leave, to give back the ability to choose vacation times to the populace, and for the government to promote and strengthen the system of paid leave for employees; only through such implementation can the dilemma surrounding Chinese-style holidays be alleviated.

Source: Sohu

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Keywords: holiday schedule; national days; Chinese style holidays China’s 2014 National Holiday’s Proposal

6 Comments

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WCG

A famous quote, "To make the simple things more complex is common place. To make the complex things simple, that's genius." Why does this need to be so complicated? Is someone in the government purposely trying to make this difficult in order to make themselves look valuable by figuring it out? Just do it and move on to more important things like education reform.

Dec 30, 2013 12:29 Report Abuse

dom87

i really hate these rescheduling of workdays. man i hate to work on sunday so much and its even worse to work 9 days in a row. wtf is wrong with the holidays here? cant even give the people 7 days rest without stealing other free time of them?

Dec 17, 2013 16:48 Report Abuse

Finbar

Ugh, Chinese holidays... For a country so determined on economic growth, one would think planning and looking ahead would be more important. I get messages from my school's office prior to every Chinese holiday, a few days after which I often get another message notifying me that things have since changed. The make up days pretty much defeat the point of having a day off in the first place, as you usually end up with a worse schedule than you already had. If I recall correctly, there were 2-3 different public holidays in September/October, most of which involved some make up days. In practice, this meant me completely getting lost and not even being able to remember what day it was or what I was supposed to do that day, as I'd have some days off during the week and class during the weekend. I'd wake up and look at my phone, feeling relaxed and getting ready to turn around and get some more shut eye when my phone displayed 'Saturday', after which I'd realize what was going on and had my day ruined as soon as I realized I'd overslept and would spend the rest of the day at school.

Dec 17, 2013 15:42 Report Abuse

wuweizea

Centralized control equals centralized chaos. The simple answer of allowing each company to determine what days to give it's employees off would wrest far to much control from the borg. Can't have people figure things out for themselves, that would be CRAZY!

Dec 17, 2013 13:01 Report Abuse

DaqingDevil

There is no doubt that in the minds of all foreigners the holiday system in China is really amazing.....amazingly crazy that is. With such a huge population there is no thought given to the fact that everyone is forced to take holidays at the same time creating these mass, mind boggling, migrations of more people across the country than the whole population of other countries! The final paragraph in this article is the solution. Paid holidays and people having the choice of when to take them. The only comment I have about "Holiday make-up" days is to say they are utterly ridiculous and it's basically a way in which the government actually takes back some of the holidays granted. The fact that holidays will not be announced until the start of each month just confirms a fact we all know - this country cannot plan a damn thing properly!

Dec 17, 2013 06:43 Report Abuse

musicjunkiealex

The system in it's current form is absolutely pathetic, nobody has a clue what time they will get off and the system of rescheduled workdays is ridiculous. At Chinese New year an estimated 300 million people are attempting to move around the country at the same time. The only solution for any sane person is to leave the country on the first available flight, which is why I'm going to Indonesia.

Dec 17, 2013 01:40 Report Abuse