 Yesterday was the Mid Autumn Festival. For Chinese people, it is the second most important traditional festival after Chinese New Year. In contrast to the seven-day long Lunar New Year holiday, there isn't an official holiday for the Moon Festival. However, the local government of Weifang City in Shandong Province took one day off to celebrate it, stirring up disparate voices.
Reporter: The local government of Weifang City worked last Saturday so that they could take one day off on the exact day of the Mid-Autumn Festival. A recent online poll on sina.com showed that 97 percent of 60,000 people polled welcome such a move. Believing that such a traditional festival should not be overlooked by modern Chinese people, and more local governments and enterprises should follow suit.
 2009-01-03 Let's Go Skiing
Although the word of winter seems to covey anything but warmth, I believe the idea of going skiing is sure to kindle the passion within many people. Today we will talk about skiing. | |
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| An article in the Procuratorial Daily raised concerns about what the Weifang government had done. First, the move could cause trouble for enterprises and individual citizens who won't enjoy the holiday if they need to have their businesses sorted out with the government. Second, Weifang City is not an isolated island; a part of a machine can't stop working without causing problems while the whole system is still working.
An article from Huashang Daily further elaborates that all public holidays should be set by the State Council, instead of by each local government. According to relevant regulations, public holidays set by the State Council should be observed by governments at all levels, and by all enterprises. Naturally, corporations are allowed to make their own necessary adjustments. The author emphasises that it's a nice gesture for the Weifang government to grant a holiday to its employees, but this should have been done on a legal basis.
As a matter of fact, representatives of the China's top legislature and political advisory body have been proposing for years that there should be a public holiday for the Moon Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and some other Chinese festivals. However, as yet no favourable result has been reached.
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