Holidays in China

I've been trying to figure out my semester teaching schedule. Not only would I like to make plans for National Holiday (国庆节，Guo2 qing4 jie2), I'd also like to plan my teaching to make sure I cover everything by the end of the semester and in the meantime spend the right amount of time on everything.

So far I think I've figured out the schedule through the first week of October. After that it's all a mystery. The official dates for National Holiday are October 1-7. A week holiday! But not really. It's actually a three-day holiday with each of the weekends on either side "moved" to form a single one-week holiday. Our school district is also giving teachers the 29th and 30th off, but in the meantime we have class every Saturday.

If you want some amusement--or a mental workout--take a look at the Wikipedia page for "Public Holidays in China". There's even a detailed, graphical example for the year 2010!