Legal holidays

China’s state council amended legal holidays on January 1, 2008, shortening the golden week of International Labor Day in May and including Lunar New Year’s Eve, Qingming Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-autumn Festival as legal holidays for the first time.

Dragon Boat Race

To a nation, featuring traditional festivals as legal holidays helps people treasure traditions in the country. Observing traditional festivals brings about an awareness of one’s national culture in the midst of globalization.

However, legal holidays are unnecessarily equal to the prosperity of traditional culture. With these new holidays in place, the question now is how to take advantage of the cultural resources hidden in the festivals so that people find a sense of belonging to Chinese culture was the original idea of legislating these traditional festivals.

Museums Open for Free

Jointly issued by the CPC Central Committee, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Culture and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the notice of museums’ free admission for the public is an important step towards popularizing Chinese culture.

Museums Open for free

It is expected that 1400 museums will be free of charge for the public across China by 2009.

With a long history and numerous cultural relics, there are thousands of museums across China. Before offering free admission, most museums had the problem of too few visitors. But now that they are open for free, these museums are crammed with people making the exhibition halls too noisy to visit.

Museums are non-profit institutions for the development of society and they should be open for the public to let them enjoy their basic cultural rights. But how to open the museums and keep an orderly atmosphere is a test for the museums as well as the visitors.