There's Something Strange in the 2020 Chinese Holiday Calendar

This year's Mid-Autumn festival holiday just ended a few days ago, and many netizens are already looking at next year’s calendar to prepare their holidays.

And in their preparations, they found something unusual…

That is

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Photo credit: wannianli.tianqi.com

Next year, in 2020, Mid-Autumn Festival and China’s National Day holiday will fall on the same day! What!?

Lunar calendar: August 15 (Mid-Autumn festival)

Gregorian calendar: October 1st

Experts have reported that this is mainly the result of a leap month.

According to the Chinese lunar calendar, there are 30 days in a “long” month and 29 days in a “short” month, which would bring us to a total of 354 to 355 days in a year. 

To keep the astronomical year synchronized, a leap month was added, which not only delays the Qixi Festival but also brings the Mid-Autumn Festival to the September 7 - October 6 period in the Gregorian calendar. In other words, China’s National Day holiday falls at the same time as 2020’s Mid-Autumn Festival.

This phenomenon is rare - the last times both national events fell on the same day were in 1982 and 2001.

But the bigger question we’re asking ourselves is: how many days off are we going to get?? 

Unfortunately we’ll have to wait for the Chinese General Office to announce it. And rest assured, because you can trust the GiC team will be on top of it when the announcement is officially out!

That said, this year’s Chinese National Day holiday is just around the corner!

What are your plans? Are you going anywhere?

Let us know in the comment section below!

Source: People's daily/ wannianli.tianqi.com

Editor: Crystal Huang

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