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Public holidays
The Chinese calendar, which is based on the lunar and solar calendars, has a wide diversity of traditional and modern holidays. During these festivals, nearly all businesses are closed or work on restricted hours.
The most important holiday and the unique remaining traditional festival, is the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival, which is celebrated in January.
During the three days that lasts the festival, almost all stores and offices areclosed down and the central streets of the principal cities are crowded by jubilant people. The Spring Festival is normally extended for another eleven days of rest. The majority of government offices, banks and some business work on reduced hours until the official conclusion of the holiday time.
The other traditional Chinese holydays, like the Qingming Festival and the Mid-autumn Festival, are not marked by official holidays, though the increasing tendency for facilities to operate restricted hours at these periods.
Since 1949, state has been added a series of new public holidays, like January 1 (New Year's Day) and October 1 (National Day). Government offices close on these dates while several shops remain open.
In recent years Chinese also have celebrated modern holidays like March 8 (Women's Day), May 1 (Labor Day), with some festive activities, but people don’t have a massive participation on these holidays, in fact businesses and offices work normally on these dates.
It is important to consider that minority nationalities celebrate their own festivals. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao have also their own traditional and official holidays.
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Holiday
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Description
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New
Year's Day
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Date:
January 1; Duration: 1
day
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Chinese
New Year
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Date:
1st day of 1st lunar
month; Duration: 3
days
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Qing
Ming (Pure &
Bright in Chinese)
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Date:
5th Solar Term (early
April); Duration: 1
day
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Labor
Day
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Date:
May 1; Duration: 1 day
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Duan
Wu (Dragon Boat)
Festival
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Date:
5th day of 5th lunar
month; Duration: 1 day
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Mid-Autumn
Festival
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Date:
15th day of 8th lunar
month; Duration: 1 day
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National
Day
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Date:
October 1; Duration: 3
days
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International
Women's Day
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Date:
March 8; Duration:
half-day
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Youth
Day
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Date:
May 4; Duration:
half-day
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Children's
Day
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Date:
June 1; Duration: 1
day
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Army
Day
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Date:
August 1; Duration:
half-day
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Chinese Language
The majority of China’s population speaks the Chinese macro-language, formed by a diversity of Han native dialects. Nearly 1.2 billion speakers are part of the Chinese family language distributed in all regions with its own tonal and analytic variants.
Most Chinese speak Mandarin (c. 885 million speakers), outnumbering any other language in the world. It is followed by Wu (c. 90 million), Cantonese (c. 71 million) and Min (c. 70 million). The different tones and syntax of the dialects convert them into languages mutually unintelligible.
Standard Mandarin (Putonghua), which is based on a Mandarin dialect of Beijing, is China’s official language spoken by 70 percent of the people, principally in northern and central China. Standard Mandarin is also an official language in Taiwan, Singapure and the United Nations.
Aside from Mandarin dialects, there are six other Chinese dialect groups, spoken principally in southern and southeastern China such as the Wu dialects, spoken in the Shanghai-Jiangsu-Zhejiang area; the Yue dialects (also known as Cantonese), spoken in Guangzhou, Hong Kong (together with English) and Macau (together with Portuguese); and the Min Nan dialects, spoken in southern Fujian, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and by many Chinese descent around the world.
Although the Han dialects are inarticulate in their spoken forms, they have shared a common written method for more than three millennia. Ancient literature and history has helped to keep together the inhabitants of northern, central, and southern China. The problem of the Chinese written language is that it is based on individual symbols called characters (80,000 words), each of which represents an idea or thing without any alphabet.
The Communist government has developed a Romanization system using the Latin alphabet, called Pinyin (a representation of the spoken sounds of Putonghua) since the 1950s, and it is now in general use by people, which are urged to learn in the schools throughout the country.
There are many Chinese minorities which still speak his own language-dialect, likeMongolian, Tibetan, Miao (Hmong), Yi, Uygur, and Kazakh. These languages traditionally didn't have a written form but today the government has encouraged the improvement of written scripts for these native dialects, using pinyin.
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Main
Chinese dialects
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Where
spoken
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Guan
(Mandarin)
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In
the northern, central
and western regions.
Includes Bejing,
Tianjin, Hebei
Province, Henan
Province, Shandong
Province, Shaanxi
Province, Jilin
Province and Inner
Mongolia among others.
North Mandarin, as
found in Beijing, is
the basis of the
modern standard
language (c. 885
million).
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Wu
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In
the east-central
region at Jiangsu
Province, Zhejiang
Province and parts of
Anhui Province. It
includes Shanghainese
(c. 90 million).
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Yue
(Cantonese)
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In
the south at Guangdong
Province including
Hong Kong and Macau,
and parts of Guangxi
Province (c. 71
million).
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Min
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In
the south-east at
Fujian Province,
Hainan Province and
parts of Zhejiang
Province and Guangdong
Province. It includes
Taiwanese (c. 70
million).
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Xiang
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In
the south-central
region at Hunan
Province and parts of
Guangxi Province (c.
36 million).
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Hakka
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Widespread,
especially between
Fujian Province and
Guangxi Province (c.
34 million).
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Gan
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In
the north at Shanxi
Province and parts of
Hebei Province (c. 31
million).
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Foreign languages
English have become a supplementary course at schools and is required for receive a university degrees. Currently most of youth Chinese people can speak Basic English, as well as the staff of service trades in hotels, airlines, restaurants, banks and post offices.
In largest cities and main tourist places there are more people who are able to participate in an English conversation than smaller cities and towns.
In the largest cities people also can learn a second foreign language such as French, German, Japanese, Italian, and Spanish at private institutes. Conversely, in rural or remote regions of China, hardly anybody can speak English or other foreign languages.
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