China's official 2019 holiday dates announced, officially

Fake news: it's a huge problem, and we must defeat it. Sure, perverting the course of democracy and distorting public discourse in a potentially irreparable manner, that's pretty serious, but when fake news might impact your own personal holiday time, well, that's just the final straw.

In recent weeks, a host of both Chinese- and English-language articles reporting China's 'official' holiday dates for 2019 have done the rounds, though, unless they have some kind of insider government guanxi, you're probably looking at some good ol' sensationalist clickbait, from WeChat accounts who have been citing all manner of iffy sources, each other, or just, you know, nothing at all because journalism doesn't require reputable sources, right?!

Now that we're done with that, time for the juicy scoop: The State Council of the People's Republic of China, as in the nation's chief administrative authority, officially announced on Thursday 6, officially, the official public holiday dates for 2019. While they may not actually differ from most of the dates speculated by the various horoscopes published in the past few weeks, we'd say you can probably go out and safely start booking your flights and trains now. 'Cause it literally doesn't get more official than the State Council. Anyhow, finally, here they are:

Screenshot via The State Council of the People's Republic of China

As China's holiday system works on a no-pain-no-gain basis, 2019's make-up working days are as follows:

New Year's Day Saturday 29 December 2018 will be a working day.

Spring Festival Saturday 2 February and Sunday 3 February will be working days.

National Day Sunday 29 September and Saturday 12 October will be working days.

So enjoy your holidays in 2019, everyone, whether you vacay, staycay or choose to dedicate your time off to becoming an internet discussion moderator – because, together, we can beat fake news.