China Confirms Shift In Dates Of National Day Public Holiday

Sources: China Economic Unit and China public holidays (qppstudio.net). The Chinese media are reporting widespread confusion as the details of the upcoming National Day Golden Week public holiday are being released. To the surprise of many, the upcoming Golden Week public holiday will run from Monday, September 29, to Sunday, October 5, 2008, while the preceding week-end (September 27-28) will be regular working days.

This was a surprise to many, as the National Day Golden Week public holiday had run from October 1 to October 7, every year without exception, since 1999.

This year's change is due to an obscure part of the changes made to China's public holidays regulations last December (see our posts of November 17, December 10, and December 16, 2007) which was not widely reported in the media and the explanations of which, as far as we know, were only released in Chinese at the time.

Subscribers to the Q++ Worldwide Public Holidays Database were made aware of this change in December of last year, and this was posted on our China public holidays page on January 1st, 2008, but it seems that this page was not viewed by enough Chinese visitors to spread the word.