Holiday Periods – Belgium vs China

The holiday periods in Belgium and China are quite different.

Entitled holidays in Belgium
Each employee in Belgium are entitled to yearly minimum 20 days of paid vacation, typically people will use the holidays in summer period (July – September) and Christmas – new year period (September – January). Good thing is, people are free to choose which days they are going to be off.

Public holidays in Belgium
Apart from that, there are 10 days of public holidays during the year, for 2018, you can find it below:

Most of the holidays are religion related, as Belgium is traditionally a quite religious country, but now-days not so many people are really spending time in church, for a full list of the holidays and significance, you can find it here.

To bridge or not to bridge

If a certain public holiday happens to be on a weekend, your entitled holidays will be automatically incremented (not for student), if the public holiday happen to be on Thursday or Tuesday, most people would fill in with a annual holiday and spend a long weekend somewhere. (for students, it is automatically bridged)

Like most people who work in Belgium, my favorite month is May and November, as there are lots of chances of long weekends, usually we plan some mini trips around the country. This year only, we planned already long weeked trips to Barcelona, Kiev, London, Paris etc..

“Winter depression” in Belgium

Once a colleague told me that “winter depression” is a real thing in Belgium, which means during the month of January, February and March, lots of people are feeling down. Simply because:

1. With the change into the winter time in November, people get up one hour earlier and finish one hour earlier, but still you begin and finish in dark as the days are that short.
2. Weather can be quite awful in winter.
3. During those months, there are no public holiday, the first one after new year is in April! Plus, it is also the most busy days for a company. (New year objectives, annual review, catching up after the holiday season etc.

I feel lucky personally as I am a Chinese, we celebrate the new year in February, although I don’t get any holidays for it, but friends get together on a weekend, family conf calls mean quite a lot to me.

Complex holiday system in China

In China however, the holiday period is quite complex, some of the holidays are according to Chinese lunar calendar date, which means, each year, they appear differently on international calendar, some holidays are international thus follows the international solar calendar.

The yearly festival holidays in 2018 are as below:

1st January – International new year’s day (yes we celebrate it too )
16th February – Chinese new year’s day (Lunar calendar 1st Jan)
8th March – International Women’s day (Women half a day)
5th April – Qingming (tomb sweeping) festival (1st April Lunar calendar)
1st May – International labor’s day
18 June – Chinese dragon boat festival (5th May Lunar calendar)
24 September – Mid-autumn festival (15th August Lunar calendar)
1st October – National Day (international calendar)

The complexity also lies into the scheduling, people need to wait for a governmental announcement to know the exact holidays for the coming year.

So what is the mystery behind Chinese public holidays?
1. There are no minimum entitled personal holidays for the employees!
It really depends on the employer, some of my friends work in international companies, they have like 16 days or so, which is A-LOT for Chinese standard. My colleagues who graduated from Chinese university don’t have any holidays in the beginning or as little as 5 days per year.

2. The public holidays are scheduled or rescheduled for “personal or managerial convenience” by government each year. The principles are simple: Everyone should bridge the festival holidays with a weekend, and it is imposed by the government, quite often, during that period, everyone has to work on a Saturday or Sunday as a compensation (see scheduling at the end of this article). Government publishes this yearly agenda each year around November only, that is why my wedding day this year on Sunday 10 February 2018 turned out to be a national working day.

3. Golden weeks

Below picture is the official holiday plan for 2018 published by Chinese government on November, red means holiday, grey means compensational working day.

Apart from the imposed long weekend and compensation, you will find in February and October, there are 2 big periods of holidays, one in February for Chinese new year, one in October, the national day. For commercial reasons, they are called golden weeks by the travel agencies.

During those 2 golden weeks, the most fascinating things happen in China: Business is completely stopped, no one will answer your email or phone calls; Traffic jams everywhere, you can imagine it as a 1,3 billion of people’s migration！

Tips: Take into consideration of the public holidays in China for business or your travelling plans.

More articles about working in Belgium:

How to read your payslip in Belgium?

How can you spend the 250 euro eco cheques?

Tas refund in Belgium – Optimise your income tax

Health insurance, are you using it to its full potential?

All the paid holidays you might have missed in Belgium

Back to school – working student in Belgium

Fun facts about divorces in Belgium

Related movie – Six days, seven nights (1998)

I would like to recommend a movie called Six days, seven nights (1998) , it tells a story about a vacation turned to a thrilled adventure for 2 strangers, and eventually how they fell in love with each other. Review on IMDB is 5.8/10 which for me is quite underrated, the movie is quite  thrilling, exciting, also romantic, worth checking it out!