2017 Chinese public holiday dates announced

Hear ye, hear ye! The General Office of the State Council has released the official dates of Chinese public holidays in 2017. The highlight of the calendar is the two periods of the mandated seven-day and eight-day break over Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn/National Day. That’s 15 whole days for a holiday within/out of China!

A couple of points of note: this year Mid Autumn Festival and National Day are joining forces to give us an unusual eight-day whopper of a holiday. Elsewhere Dragon Boat Festival is kicking off a little earlier this year, over the last weekend of May.

Here's the full rundown of the holidays we are all looking forward to:

New Year’s Day: 31 Dec-2 Jan (three days)

Chinese New Year: 27 Jan-2 Feb (seven days), make-up work days: 22 Jan (Sun) and 4 Feb (Sat)

Tomb Sweeping (Qingmingjie) Festival: 2-4 Apr (three days), make-up work day: 1 Apr (Sat)

Labour Day: 29 Apr-1 May (three days)

Dragon Boat (Duanwujie) Festival: 28-30 May (three days), make-up work day: 27 May (Sat)

Mid-Autumn Festival/National Day: 1-8 Oct (eight days), make-up work day: 30 Sep (Sat)

Want to see those dates in calendar form? Click 'read more' at the bottom of this page – coloured dates are holidays (hooray!) while grey ones are make-up work days (boo!). Now excuse us whilst we get down to planning our leave days strategically...