When we talk about holidays, the first thing a lot of people focus on is the number of days of vacation. According to the 2024 mainland public holiday arrangement, we can count a total of 30 days of holiday time: 1 day on New Year's Day, 8 days for the Spring Festival, 3 days for Qingming Festival, 5 days for Labor Day, 3 days off for the Dragon Boat Festival, 3 days for the Mid-Autumn Festival and 7 days for the National Day. At first glance, this is indeed a gratifying number, however, there is a hidden secret behind this number: out of these 30 days of vacation, there are actually only 11 real public holidays.
Why is this so? This brings us to the question of "compensatory leave." The so-called compensatory holiday is to make reasonable adjustments to statutory holidays and weekends (Saturday and Sunday) to form a continuous long holiday, so as to facilitate everyone's travel or family visits. In other words, in the above 30 days of vacation, there are actually many compensatory Saturdays and Sundays. If we exclude these Saturdays and Sundays, there are only 11 days left for the actual public holidays.
This fact may surprise many people. After all, we often think that these consecutive vacations are real breaks when they are not. This phenomenon is very common in the public holiday arrangements in the mainland, such as the Spring Festival holiday, the May Day holiday, the National Day Golden Week, etc., in fact, all of which contain the element of compensatory holidays. That's why when we plan our holiday trips or activities, we need to know the specific holiday dates in advance to avoid misunderstandings.
Understanding this has a very important impact on our work, life and travel planning. On the one hand, we can know exactly how many days off we really have, so that we can better plan our work and study. On the other hand, we can also see more clearly the characteristics of the mainland holiday system, that is, by adjusting the time of weekdays and weekends, creating continuous long holidays, encouraging everyone to travel and spending, so as to promote the development of tourism.
Although on the surface it looks like we have 30 days of public holidays, in fact, we only have 11 days off. This secret hidden behind the numbers reveals a unique pattern of public holiday arrangements in mainland China, and also reminds us to look at holidays rationally while enjoying them, and make reasonable plans and adjustments for our work and life.