If a Chinese calendar marks a Sunday as a working day, check the annual holiday notice before assuming the graphic is wrong. The practical unit to copy is the break plus its explicitly listed working-date exceptions.
Read two instructions
放假 (fàngjià) means time off. 上班 (shàngbān) means work or attend work. 调休 (tiáoxiū) means adjusting rest days in this context, while a calendar's 补班 (bǔbān) label means a make-up workday. Translating the festival name alone misses the operational detail.
Take the 2026 Spring Festival as a worked example. The State Council General Office notice specifies February 15–23 as a nine-day break and February 14 and February 28, both Saturdays, as working days. Create a days-off range and two separate working-Saturday entries. Count the range inclusively: 23 − 15 + 1 = 9. That count describes the consecutive break, not nine separate statutory holiday entitlements.
Match the calendar year
The notice for 2026 was published November 4, 2025. The previous year's publication date does not make it the wrong document. Instead, match the year in the title and read the dates in the body.
The 2025 notice combined National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival into October 1–8, with September 28 and October 11 designated as working days. The 2026 notice lists Mid-Autumn Festival on September 25–27 and National Day on October 1–7, with September 20 and October 10 designated as working days. An old eight-day graphic would misstate the 2026 October schedule.
Add the organization's calendar
The annual notice provides a national scheduling reference. It does not guarantee a specific office, museum, delivery service or team is available. Confirm the organization's opening or staffing arrangements before booking. For a cross-border meeting, confirm the local date and time too.
When entering an all-day range, inspect how your calendar handles the end date. Software using an exclusive end date may need February 24 stored as the end to display a break through February 23. That convention does not add a day to the official break.
A reusable check
Keep the year, original notice URL, inclusive break, each working-date exception and the organization's own arrangements together. If a calendar repeats 上班 (shàngbān), meaning work, beside another date, record that exception as well.
We read the original 2025 and 2026 notices on October 15, 2026. These are retrospective examples for a reading method; they do not announce a future year's schedule or determine individual pay entitlements.
Original sources:
https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/202511/content_7047090.htm
https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/202411/content_6986382.htm
This independent excerpt introduces the method. The full ThreadEast guide includes a vocabulary table and the complete 2026 holiday-arrangements table: