National Day of the People’s Republic of China

The National Day of the People’s Republic of China 国庆节 (guóqìng jié) is 1 October, the date in 1949 of the proclamation in Beijing. It is a public holiday. Together with the days around it, it makes Golden Week, one of the two great travel peaks of the year (the other is the Spring Festival). Flag-raising on Tiananmen Square, fireworks in the provinces, and a week of crowded trains are the ordinary picture.

It is a Gregorian date, not a lunar one. It sits on this hub because the Chinese calendar of the site includes the civil holidays that close the country, not because it is a traditional festival in the sense of Duanwu or Zhongqiu. The other civil day treated the same way is Labor Day, on 1 May, which has no article here: it is observed, not told.