Nation worked up over days off

By Raymond Zhou | China Daily | Updated: 2013-12-07 06:53

Some cried foul at the exclusion of a seven-day Labor Day (May 1) holiday, as it would have been the most popular had it been included. Others argued that a longer Spring Festival is needed as it is the time traditionally stipulated for family gatherings, and those living far apart have to spend time traveling home to be with their parents.

Having a long nationwide holiday sounds like a lot of fun, but it is often a logistical nightmare. It strains resources to breaking point when hundreds of millions of people travel at the same time. Even for businesses that can hike prices, it means long idle periods and wasted resources during the slow season.

The rousing call for longer and more holidays is a sign of the middle class flexing its muscles. In the agrarian era, farmers could have up to half a year off over a long winter, giving rise to such folk art as the two-person banter of Northeast China. The notion of legal holidays did not creep into Chinese consciousness until the 1990s when large segments of the society started moving to urban areas.

I remember when I was a kid even the weekend meant only one day off, or one and a half days at most. Yet productivity was so low that many treated their working hours as a time of relaxation and reserved the holiday for heavy-lifting household chores.

The three options listed above have a fixed number of holidays - 11 days excluding "borrowed" weekends. It was obvious some people were hoping for more holidays in aggregate, not just moving days around to form longer holiday periods.

It is reasonable that people want long holidays - to spend time with loved ones, to visit faraway places or simply to take a rest from work. It's just not the wisest thing to have long holidays with a billion-plus others. The way I see it, it is the scheduling of holidays, more than the number of holidays, that is at the root of the problem.

Now, you can do nothing about the Spring Festival. Essentially Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one, it is determined by the lunar calendar and can be much longer than seven days depending on the kind of work you do and the policy of your employer. In most workplaces that I know, you can extend the week by several days by either finishing up your work ahead of time or asking for leave outright.

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