A practice that has pleased millions of Chinese but perplexed
others since 1999 - when three national holidays were each extended
to last a week - came under scrutiny yesterday.
Some lawmakers attending the Fifth Session of the Ninth National
People's Congress called for the holidays to be made shorter
because they cannot tolerate the side effects that come with the
long break.
Others argued people should continue to enjoy longer holidays and
improve their leisure time.
May Day (May 1), which used to be just a single day off, and the
two-day National Day (October 1) holiday were each stretched to
three days to equal that of the Spring Festival three years
ago.
Each holiday has since been expanded to seven days off work through
the addition of the two nearest weekends.
Government officials dubbed the lumped holidays "golden weeks,"
because eight such vacations combined since 1999 have contributed
at least 100 billion yuan (US$12 billion) to the tourism industry
alone, indicated the latest statistics from the National Holidays
Travel Co-ordination Office in Beijing.
But Qin Chijiang, an NPC deputy, thought differently. "We can never
ignore the side effects coming along with this compulsory, unified
arrangement of taking days off."
Qin's motion to the NPC is to abolish the current week-long
holidays plan and allow people to choose to rest at their
convenience.
Based on what he claimed were 18-month studies of the official
arrangement and talks with the masses, Qin maintained that the
manipulation of people's holidays has in fact caused "trouble and
inconvenience."
The concentrated holidays have put the country's traffic order
"somewhat in disarray," Qin alleged. The railways, road and civil
aviation departments have to react to the travel peaks by reserving
more transport vehicles for passengers, and cut those for cargoes,
he said.
The holiday travel spree has caused a flurry of people to flood
popular travel routes and sites, invariably overcrowding these
destinations, Qin said.
Some people have now even decided to give up going out during those
holidays, he said.
The National Holiday Travel Co-ordinating Office also logged
mounting complaints about the tourism service, with many moaning
about the difficulty of booking air and railway tickets, said an
official at the office, who identified himself only as Liu.
The seeming prosperity in tourism during the holiday booms has led
to some travel agencies and sites to blindly augment infrastructure
facilities.
"But the irony is, after the three long holidays, parks and sites
of interests are usually poorly attended," Qin said.
"The Spring Festival should be reinstated to a three-day holiday,
as it is the most important festival," Qin said.
"No holidays should be artificially extended by moving the
weekends, and people should be allowed to deposit their holidays,
so that they can 'cash in' when they want."
Li
Shutian, another legislator, disagreed with Qin.
He
claimed Chinese travelers have become more rational and the travel
service continues to improve so most of the trouble and
inconvenience listed by Qin could be resolved.
"Compared with the phenomenal economic benefits brought by the
holiday arrangement, the trouble it causes is just peripheral," he
said.
He
charged that the three seven-day holidays should be enlarged to
nine days each, so that people could travel farther and rest
better.
"During the May Day holidays last year, more than 73.76 million
people traveled, but 67.8 percent of them just took short- distance
treks. For a person in northern China to travel to the south by
train, he or she will have to spend at least four days on the way,
and will thus have little time for sightseeing."
(
China
Daily March 13, 2002)