It's Happening....
Chinese get to vote on holidays for 2014
- Details
- Category: Governmental News
- Published: Thursday, 28 November 2013 08:57
By Li Qian | November 28, 2013, Thursday
Chinese authorities are seeking public opinions on three draft holiday arrangements for next year in a poll running on the country’s major news websites.
The Spring Festival holiday lasts seven days in all three schemes, including the weekends before and after.
The major differences apply to the National Day holiday with options of three days, five days or seven days, all from October 1. The latter two schemes include weekends.
Meanwhile, some other holidays such as New Year’s Day, Qingming Festival, May Day, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival will last one day if they fall on a Wednesday, three days including a weekend if on Tuesday or Thursday, or extend into Monday if they fall on a Saturday or Sunday.
On October 10, China’s national holiday coordinating office launched a similar online poll following complaints over public holiday rules that featured long breaks but at the cost of working extra days in a row.
The poll showed most people were unhappy with current arrangements and, in response, the office yesterday proposed the three schemes.
Chinese people would still have 11 official holidays a year but, in most cases, would not have to work weekends in order to piece together weeklong or three-day holidays.
Currently, two weekdays around a single holiday date are also given as holiday creating a three-day break. Time is made up by working weekends.
For a seven-day holiday over National Day and Spring Festival, employees usually have to work six, seven or even eight consecutive days to offset the extra days off.
Voting ends at midnight on Saturday.
So far, the majority of votes are for the seven-day National Day holiday.
By 6:50pm yesterday, 34,000 people had voted on sina.com, with 48.8 percent choosing that option. At qq.com, 68.5 percent of more than 360,000 people were in favor. On the People’s Daily website, more than 140,000 people voted, with almost 56 percent choosing the seven-day National Holiday.
However, many people weren't happy with any of the options.
In a poll on weibo.com, out of almost 96,000 people taking part, 94 percent said all three schemes were unreasonable, with calls for the Spring Festival holiday to be 15 days.
