Festivals and Public Holidays
Part of A Better Guide to Běijīng’s Practical A–Z
China’s public holidays are frequently altered by the government with very little advance notice. In theory there is now paid annual leave of five days after five years’ work for the same employer, ten days after ten years, and 15 days after 20 years, but contracts are simply terminated and reissued to get round this, with the result that almost everyone in China travels during the same national public holidays with the resulting strain on transport systems. May sights simply cannot be seen for the crowds.
Chinese public holidays come in four types: Chinese New Year or Spring Festival which stands alone; holidays lasting about seven days known, in a phrase borrowed from the Japanese, as Golden Weeks; one-day public holidays usually expanded to three days; and complete surprises, announced at short notice, such as the five days suddenly given to most residents of the capital during the APEC meeting in Běijīng in November 2014.
Chinese New Year or Spring Festival (春节, Chūn Jiē) is a lunar holiday occurring in late-January or the first half of February, during which the greatest migration in human history takes place. Most travel at this time is for the purpose of returning home to be with family, and Běijīng empties of its migrant workers, many of them taking their only chance to see children being raised by their grandparents back in the home village. So attempting to leave Běijīng in the run-up to the holiday may be a great struggle despite provision of thousands of extra train and bus services, and disruption of some degree is spread over a 40-day period. In 2013, for instance, it was claimed that the first day rail tickets went on sale for this period tickets to major cities sold out in 20 seconds, with 2.65 million tickets sold that day alone. An estimated 430 million people made 3.4 billion journeys during the holiday period, mostly by road. In 2016 an estimated 15 million people left Běijīng, so, unsurprisingly, travelling to the city towards the end of the holiday may also be difficult. China’s top 125 tourist attractions, many of them in Běijīng, received a total of 31.2 million visitors. Many restaurants and smaller shops do close for at least three days during this period. But getting around Běijīng tends to be rather easier at this time of year: approximately half the city’s population leaves town.
There’s been a modest revival of the temple fairs that were once a key feature of the holiday some of which revive traditional entertainments (see An Early Bar Street), but some of which are intended merely to draw shoppers to modern malls or shopping streets. Some activities, such as coin-tossing at Daoist temples, go on all year round. But you might get to see performance such as gāoqiāo (高跷, stilt walking), hànchuán (旱船, a folk dance involving a model boat), zhōngfān (中幡, pole acrobatics), or yāogǔ (腰鼓, drum dancing); buy handicrafts such as miànrén (面人, figures made from dough) and liǎnpǔ (脸谱, face-painting, Chinese opera style): and try snacks such as chaǒgān (炒肝, stir-fried liver), bàodǔ (爆肚, deep-fried tripe), or yáng zásui (羊杂碎, chopped and cooked sheep entrails) although there are more standard and appealing snack foods widely available, too.
Bans come and go, but free entertainment may involve the setting off of fireworks by private individuals and businesses in seemingly almost every street in the capital. Safety precautions are limited and the mayhem, which would make the average civil war seem peaceful, is best observed from the safety of a balcony. There are hundreds of injuries annually, and in 2009 China Central Television managed to torch part of its own multi-billion-yuan headquarters with an unauthorised display. Do not expect much sleep.
Golden weeks were an experiment in ‘holiday economics’ begun in 1999 designed to get the masses out and about and spending money. But despite annual upbeat reports in the Chinese press, it was eventually admitted by the professor responsible for the policy that they simply spend in a more concentrated period what they would have spent anyway. The May ‘golden week’ was dismantled in 2009 and some of its days redistributed to traditional holidays long-despised as superstitious, but which, according to the National Development and Reform Commission, ‘give greater importance to traditional culture and social customs originating in China’s thousands of years of splendid history.’
The October National Day holiday still survives. It’s officially three days including the 1 October National Day, but two further days are switched from a neighbouring weekend through which the masses have to work instead. The exact pattern depends on what day of the week is 1 October in any given year, but it is only one weekend plus five working days long, and services usually available on weekends and public holidays will not be available on that worked weekend. Those who can do so leave town, and although there’s an influx of visitors to Běijīng the number of cars on the road drops dramatically, and public transport is less busy, although some metro stations close. However, major sights see vast numbers of visitors. The Forbidden City’s theoretical capacity is 60,000 visitors per day, but on one recent National Day holiday there were reportedly 122,000. Time to learn a useful chéngyǔ (成语, four-character set phrase):人身人海 (rén shān rén hǎi, there are mountains of people; oceans of them).
Shorter holidays include the one-day New Year’s Day, early-April Qīngmíng, May Day, the mid-June Duānwǔ Jie, and the late-September Mid-Autumn festival — some of them lunar holidays that jump around the solar calendar. Each of them is expanded to three days using a nearby weekend whenever possible, or a neighbouring weekend is worked as a substitute for the two extra weekday holidays. New Year’s Day is usually 1–3 January. Qīngmíng (清明) is 4 or 5 April, and also known as tomb-sweeping day (扫墓, sǎomù). It is properly used to visit and tidy graves,and pay respects to dead ancestors, but it’s also the time for taking a spring trip, so expect scenic spots both in the city and outside to be very busy. This is not the time to organise a road trip to an outlying village, for instance. May Day (Labour Day) is 1 May. Duānwǔ Jié (端午节, Dragon Boat Festival) is on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, and marks the watery suicide of a 3rd–4th century BCE poet and righteous official (a creature rarer than a unicorn in Chinese history) called Qū Yúan (屈原) of the pre-unification state of Chǔ (楚). Festivities take the form of races between long, narrow ‘dragon’ boats but this is more seen in southern coastal areas, although in recent times these have also been staged on reservoirs northeast of Běijīng. More accessible is the eating of zòngzi (粽子), portions of glutinous rice with additional fillings, most often jujubes in the north (small dates), wrapped into triangular packages using reeds, and tied up with string. Again expect major sights to be busy. The Mid-Autumn Festival is a time to sit in open spaces and view the moon, although modern pollution ensures that is often impossible. Gifts of moon cakes — pastries filled with lotus seed paste or other fillings that contain more calories than the laws of physics permit — are often given. In a pointless piece of window-dressing in 2014 officials were banned from accepting boxes of moon cakes as these often proved chewier or crunchier than expected due to the presence of bribes in cash or valuables.
One-day holidays include New Year’s Day but this is also expanded to three days, if necessary by working through a neighbouring weekend.
Children under 14 get one day off on 1 June. Women, the army, and young people over 14 get a half-day off on their own days, but these have no impact on visitors. Holidays with no days off worth noting are the Lantern Festival (the 15th day of the first lunar month) and Double Seventh (seventh day of the seventh lunar month). During the Lantern Festival shops, houses, and public parks may be hung prettily with lanterns painted with riddles. In 2019 a limited portion of the Forbidden City was opened in the evening, hung with LED lanterns—a practice which may perhaps continue. The Double Seventh has in recently times been heavily promoted as China’s answer to Valentine’s Day (although that gets celebrated, too). Expect appropriate shop window displays and that tables will be harder to come by at better restaurants. Christmas is observed at least commercially in some shop windows, and foreign-run hotels and expat-run and expat-serving restaurants go for full-scale decorations and table-groaning Western feasts. But it’s a normal working day. In December 2014 one university in Xī’ān banned Christmas as un-Chinese and kitsch, which seemed to indicate the authorities had rather missed the point. Assorted forms of religious celebration are available. See South Church.
Lamaist/Buddhist festivals: These are all lunar and seem to vary from temple to temple, often attracting large numbers of serious-minded Tibetans and Mongolians and crowds of gawping onlookers. If you can establish when these dates are by the solar calendar you are likely to see ‘sunning the Buddha’, elaborate religious dances and mass chanting, accompanied by colourful fairs. In Běijīng the Lama Temple has a long-standing tradition of religious dances (‘devil dances’) at Tibetan New Year, also lunar and slightly later than Chinese New Year.
One of the least observed holidays is the 5 March Léi Fēng (雷锋) Day, marking the beginning of a Máo-inspired campaign that everyone should emulate the (mostly imaginary) actions of a selfless soldier of that name, supposedly crushed by a falling telegraph pole in 1962. The modern propagandists are comparatively tin-eared when it comes to selecting the tunes to which they want to convince the people to march, and the people know very well that there are no Léi Fēng in government. Nevertheless three movies about him were released on the 50th anniversary of the campaign in 2013. Many cinemas had trouble selling even a single ticket. More in tune with the times, Chinese on-line retail giant Alibaba (several times the size of Amazon) holds an annual Singles’ Day in November, in which single people buy presents for themselves. In 2014 it shipped over 200 million packages worth a total of over ¥40 billion in a single day.
Other annual events that may cause disruption include the ‘Two Meetings’ (两会, liǎng huì) of rubber-stamp bodies the National Peoples’ Congress and the Chinese Peoples’ Political Consultative Conference held together over 12 days in March, with assorted restrictions beginning beforehand and lasting until two days afterwards. Progress through Tiān’ān Mén Square may be blocked by photo opportunities in which representatives of China’s 50-odd officially recognised minorities are patronisingly forced to pose in traditional costume. Buses and taxis may be forced to re-route or to file paperwork before passing along roads adjacent to the Great Hall of the People. X-ray machines are installed in the underpasses leading to the square, and there are searches at the Tiān’ān Mén itself (easily avoided by passing through the Tài Miào instead). Texting services may be restricted, all AirBnB or similar bookings cancelled, and no more than ten foreigners at a time allowed in some bars and restaurants. Hotel rooms overlooking Tiān’ān Mén Square or neighbouring avenues may be unavailable. Street vendors are also cleared away.
In early June the gāokǎo (高考) university entrance exam closes roads around schools to provide some peace for the 10 million children around the country competing for around 6.5 million places. See Educating Emigrants.
2021
New Year’s Day Fri 1 January
Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) Thu 11–Wed 17 February (Sun 7 & Sat 20 will be worked.)
Qīngmíng (Tomb-Sweeping Festival) Sat 3–Mon 5 April
May Day 1–5 May (Sat 8 will be worked)
Duānwǔ Jié (Dragon Boat Festival) Sat 12–Mon 14 June
Mid-Autumn Festival Sun 19–June 21 (Sat 18 will be worked)
National Day Fri 1–Thu 7 October (Sun 26 Sept & Sat 9 Oct)
nb: Chinese bus tours do not operate on holiday weekends, nor do they run on those weekend days worked in lieu.
Next in Practical A–Z: Guides
Previous: Entertainment
Practical A–Z Index
Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing.
For moderated on-line discussion of China travel, join The Oriental-List.
