This holiday weekend, let’s be thankful … that we don’t have too many national holidays. We all take a few days off together, but most people take longer vacations at times that are convenient for them and their employers, rather than times mandated by the state. Things are different in China. This AP article (also in the Post-Dispatch, although I couldn’t find it on their website) describes the chaos that follows from planned holidays:

As China becomes more prosperous, its people are traveling more on their vacations – and overwhelming the facilities. The resulting public backlash is prompting the government to rethink its tightly regulated national holiday policy.

Most Chinese cannot take a break when they want. Rather, the government has set three weeks a year as national holidays.

The article describes a new plan to break up a weeklong holiday into several daylong holidays at different times of the year. Here is my favorite sentence in the article:

The plan has set off a lively debate in the state-run media.

Yeah, right.