More flexibility needed to ensure holiday schedule respects tradition

By Xu Qinduo Source:Global Times Published: 2013-12-19 18:23:01

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

I know it's an impossible task to make everybody happy when authorities schedule the holidays for 2014. But still, I think we can and should do a better job in planning the dates of the days off.

To be fair, the new holiday plan published recently by the State Council has effectively reduced the occurrence of embarrassing situations where you have to work eight or nine days in a row to compensate for time off for a certain holiday. Many people vehemently oppose these day-swaps, as no other country follows this practice.

The designers also managed to create a few "three-day holidays" for the Tomb-sweeping Festival, International Labor Day, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival, making it convenient for people to travel for a short but nice escape from work. For that, credit should be given to those working on the holiday arrangement.

The discontent, which is widespread and strong, has been about the fact that the Chinese Lunar New Year's Eve is not included in the public holidays. Online opinion polls show nearly 90 percent of Internet users are opposed to the new plan.

If you check the website of travel agencies, you'll find that holiday travel packages for the Lunar New Year, or the Spring Festival as it is known, all start, without exception, from January 30, New Year's Eve. Therefore for travel agencies, the new plan must have come as a surprise and disrupted sales.

The Eve of the Chinese New Year is like Christmas Eve to Westerners - the most important moment for family members to get together and enjoy a reunion dinner. Parents usually look forward to the arrival of their children, who usually work in other cities, on this day to celebrate the Spring Festival together.

For many Chinese, excluding the day from the New Year holidays amounts to a total disregard of Chinese traditions.

I have sympathy with those 90 percent of whose who are unhappy with the holiday arrangement. But I have something more to share with my fellow citizens. If you take a look at holidays in Western countries, such as the US, Christmas Eve is not a federal holiday either. In Britain, people have only two days off for Christmas: Christmas Day and the day after.

In the US, even though Christmas Eve is not a public holiday, it is a partial day off in at least three states and a full day off in a few other states. Businesses remain open but may close earlier or offer limited services. In the UK, the holiday plan actually has a lot more to do with the employers than with the government.

Therefore, if there's anything we can borrow from their practices, one solution is to have four days off during the New Year week. The Eve can be included or not as people wish, and they can choose the rest of the days they want to be off in that week. That would increase the number of our annual public holidays from the current 11 days to 12 days. One more day off should not be too much of a concern.

After all, how much difference does this one day create in terms of national economic development? It's either minimal, or on the contrary, could even boost spending on gifts and traveling. 

Chinese employees are ranked as among the most industrious according to a recent German survey. Don't the most hard-working people deserve an extra day off from their busy working lives? 

All in all, holiday designers in our country probably should learn to share more decision-making power on holiday arrangements with the public. In that case, they may well be relieved from all those boisterous complaints.

The author is a commentator on current affairs with China Radio International. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn



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