Holidays in China

Official national public holidays. Regional and religious observances may vary by area.

About Time in China

At 07:59:60 on January 1, 2009, China Had a Second That Usually Does Not Exist

Just before midnight UTC at the end of 2008, clocks in China displayed an unusual sequence: 07:59:59, 07:59:60, 08:00:00 on the morning of January 1, 2009. The extra label was a leap second, inserted worldwide to keep Coordinated Universal Time close to time based on Earth rotation. In China, the adjustment appeared eight hours after the UTC date boundary because national standard time is UTC+8.

The National Time Service Center applied the extra second not only to its laboratory time scale but also to the systems that distributed official time. Shortwave and longwave broadcasts, low-frequency time-code transmissions, internet services, telephone time service and timestamp systems all had to pass through the same one-second anomaly without losing synchronization.

That moment illustrates a detail hidden inside everyday civil time: the minute does not always contain exactly 60 labeled seconds. When a positive leap second is introduced, the clock can briefly show second 60 before advancing to the next minute.

Beijing Time Is Generated and Maintained in Xi'an, Not Beijing

China's national standard time is commonly called Beijing Time, but the scientific infrastructure that generates and maintains it is based in Shaanxi. The National Time Service Center, founded in 1966 and headquartered in Lintong, Xi'an, maintains UTC(NTSC) and the national atomic time scale TA(NTSC).

Modern national time is produced from an ensemble of atomic frequency standards rather than from the apparent position of the Sun over Beijing. The center compares and combines atomic clocks, links its scale to international timekeeping, and distributes the resulting standard across the country. Its official description states that the difference between the national standard it maintains and UTC is kept within a few nanoseconds.

Distribution also has its own rhythm. The BPM shortwave station broadcasts standard time and frequency signals 24 hours a day on 2.5, 5, 10 and 15 MHz. Longwave, low-frequency code, satellite and network systems extend the same reference into navigation, communications, power systems, transport and scientific measurement.

On November 3, 1949, Xi'an Abandoned Longshu Time for Beijing Time

China did not always operate on a single national clock. Earlier standard-time schemes divided the country into several zones, and western cities could use a civil time different from the eastern seaboard. A particularly clear transition survives in the record from Xi'an.

On November 2, 1949, the Xi'an municipal authorities announced that Longshu time would stop being used and that Beijing Time would take effect the next day, November 3. Chengdu adopted Beijing Time shortly after December 27, and within the following months the new standard spread across most of the country.

The change was more than a new label on clocks. Railway schedules, radio announcements, office hours and long-distance communication work best when distant places share an agreed reference. The 1949 transition therefore compressed several regional time practices into one national timetable.

For 652 Years, Beijing's Bell and Drum Towers Regulated the Night

Before electronic signals and atomic clocks, Beijing broadcast time acoustically. The Bell and Drum Towers served as the capital's official timekeeping center through the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, a function that local heritage records describe as lasting 652 years before the old system ended in 1924.

The night was divided into watches rather than modern hourly announcements. Historical descriptions place the opening watch between 19:00 and 21:00 and the fifth watch between 03:00 and 05:00. The Drum Tower used a main drum and a group of smaller drums, while the Bell Tower carried a massive bronze bell whose sound could spread across the city.

One traditional drum sequence totaled 108 beats, arranged in alternating fast and slow groups. Time was therefore not something residents needed to read from a personal dial. At night, it could arrive as a citywide sound signal marking the progression from one watch to the next.

The Qiantang Bore Follows Two Lunar Windows Every Month

Along the Qiantang River in Zhejiang, one of China's most dramatic natural clocks is created by the interaction of ocean tides, the funnel shape of Hangzhou Bay and the river channel. The bore does not arrive as a random flood. Its strongest appearances follow a recurring lunar schedule.

Local records describe notable bores from the 1st through the 5th and again from the 16th through the 20th day of each lunar month. The most celebrated event is associated with the 18th day of the eighth lunar month. In the Southern Song period, authorities even scheduled naval displays for that date, helping establish a tide-watching tradition that has lasted for centuries.

The timing is astronomical but the exact arrival at a viewing point is local. River discharge, channel shape and the changing geometry of the estuary affect how the wave propagates upstream. Near Yanguan, the advancing bore can move at roughly 10 meters per second, so a phenomenon predicted by the lunar calendar becomes a fast-moving event measured in minutes along the riverbank.

Twenty-Four Solar Terms Divide the Year by the Sun, Not by the Moon

One of China's oldest surviving systems for organizing the year is based on the annual motion of the Sun. The Twenty-Four Solar Terms divide that cycle into 24 named stages, beginning with the Beginning of Spring and ending with Greater Cold. The system developed in the Yellow River region from repeated observation of seasonal, astronomical and environmental change.

Its practical value came from resolution. Four broad seasons are too coarse for many agricultural decisions, while 24 successive markers create a much finer sequence for anticipating changes in temperature, rainfall, frost, sowing and harvest conditions. Because the terms follow the solar year, they remain tied to the seasonal cycle even when used alongside a lunisolar calendar.

The system is still used in farming, seasonal customs, festivals, songs and everyday date awareness, and UNESCO added the Twenty-Four Solar Terms to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016. It is a rare case in which an ancient observational calendar remains part of modern time culture without functioning as the country's civil calendar.

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