Here’s The Official 2013 China Holiday Schedule

How many Saturdays and Sundays will you be working next year? The State Council is here to fill you in (English version here).

These are always hilarious, so let’s dive in:

New Year’s: 

OFF: Jan. 1-3 (Tues-Thurs)
ON:  Jan. 5-6 (Sat-Sun)

Spring Festival:

OFF: Feb. 9-15 (Sat-Fri)
ON: Feb. 16-17 (Sat-Sun)

Tomb-Sweeping Day:

OFF: April 4-6 (Thurs-Sat)
ON: April 7 (Sun)

Labor Day:

OFF: April 29-May 1 (Mon-Wed)
ON: April 27-28 (Sat-Sun)

Dragon Boat Festival:

OFF: June 10-12 (Mon-Wed)
ON: June 8-9 (Sat-Sun)

Mid-Autumn Festival:

OFF: Sept. 19-21 (Thurs-Sat)
ON: Sept 22 (Sun)

National Day:

OFF: Oct. 1-7 (Tues-Mon)
ON: Sept. 28-29 (Sat-Sun) Sept. 29 (Sun), Oct. 12 (Sat)

To recap: the sanctity of weekends means nothing here. Holidays will be forcing workers to go into the office on five Saturdays and an entire week of Sundays (seven). In two instances — Labor Day and Dragon Boat Festival — workers are working seven straight days before getting three off (then two on, two off, before returning to the normal workweek schedule). In the case of National Day, one workday is sandwiched between nine off-days. How many people do you suspect will call in sick on that one day? Is it acceptable to call in sick, say, a week in advance? [CORRECTION, 7:53 pm: My National Day reading is off; people work nine straight days before that holiday.]

Plan accordingly, everybody.

    11 Responses to “Here’s The Official 2013 China Holiday Schedule”

    1. snoopfrog

      Honestly can’t understand the time wasted by these bureaucrats…. why work Saturday Sunday and get Tuesday Wednesday… this idiotic. Always has been but this year seems so especially. And the next person who tells me that china has so many public holidays can piss off….. maybe time anyway they did away with golden weeks and expanded annual leave rights so that people could get away with their kids when its less crowded….

      Still can’t imagine the scene though… do they vote in a committee to decide on switching days?

      Reply
      • Harold

        No, it’s because there are a set number of days off for holiday and in order to create longer holidays from them, they essentially swap out the weekdays and the weekends so you don’t have a stupid situation where you have all week off, then have to work on Friday and then have the weekend. Doing it this way, you get the Friday off, but sacrifice a Sunday after or a Saturday prior. Or the holiday is only 3 days long and they sack the prior saturday and following sunday so you get a longer holiday without sacrificing productivity. This encourages more travel which is a boost to the economy and is more meaningful than a day off where you just stay at home because there’s no point.

        Reply
        • Sam

          Nonsense, it’s got nothing to do with productivity or giving people more time off. Check your theory against the dates above, it doesn’t make sense.

          Korea is another country where people have very little time off, but at least there, when a national holiday falls on a weekend, people are given the following Monday or preceding Friday off and not forced to work the next Sunday, which is just ridiculous.

          Reply
          • snoopfrog

            It may have encouraged travel in the past but this is adifferent china now and if they scrapped this against say more annual leave on dates chosen by people this would most likely not decrease tourism because people woukd still go and actually maybe increase it because right now many people stay home to avoid crowds.

            And this has indeed nothing to do with productivity. The last fifteen years, the least productive days i have seen have been those working weekends

            Reply
    2. John

      Where is the one work day between the 9 days off? It looks like a 9 day work week (Sep 22-30) between a 3 day (Sep 19-21) and 7 day (Oct 1-7) holiday. 9 days!

      Reply
    3. Kicking It

      Hey I think you need to check the holiday dates again. Your dates for the National Day are off because the official Gov site says we work on the 29th and again on oct. 12th. So we actually end up being off on the 28th. So we work for 6 days then have 1 day off, then work for 2 days then have the holiday. Then we come back on the 8th of October and have a 5 day work week.

      The worst stretch is actually the New Years holiday because we will have an 8 day work week. As we will need to work from the 4th of January to the 11th of January without a day off.

      Reply

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