* Several Chinese provinces are introducing their first-ever spring break.
* The varying schedules are combined with the Qingming Festival, the May Day holiday or weekends, resulting in breaks of five to eight days.
* The new vacation allows children to connect with nature, and also boosts tourism and consumption.
CHENGDU, April 4 (Xinhua) — When students at a primary school in southwest China’s Sichuan Province were told they would enjoy their first spring break in early April and with no homework to worry about, their cheers nearly blew the roof off.
“Let’s give students a chance to step into nature,” said Shi Ai, vice principal of Deyang No.1 Primary School in the city of Deyang. “Spring break is beneficial to students’ physical and mental health, eyesight and mood.”
Sichuan is among several provinces across the country introducing their first-ever spring break this year. Others include Jiangsu, Anhui and Guizhou, as well as many cities in other provinces.
Spring break schedules vary nationwide: the break typically lasts two or three days, but falls at different times. In some areas, such as Deyang, the break comes just before the three-day Qingming Festival in early April, while in others it extends into the May Day holiday or is combined with weekends, resulting in a break of five to eight days.
The new vacation not only allows children to connect with nature in spring and reduces students’ academic burden, but also creates a window for family travel, which is expected to boost tourism and consumption.
According to travel platform Qunar, bookings for flights departing from Sichuan’s provincial capital Chengdu between April 1 and 6 have increased by 50 percent from the same period last year.
Data from Chengdu East Railway Station show that it handled 336,000 passenger trips on April 1, the first day of the city’s spring break, ranking first among high-speed railway stations nationwide. On the same day, children from six to 14 accounted for 52.5 percent and 50 percent of passengers on trains departing Chengdu for Guangzhou and Beijing, respectively.
Ma Xingzhi, a primary school student in Chengdu, traveled to Wuzhen, a water town in east China’s Zhejiang Province, with his parents.
“I didn’t realize until I got here that the houses in Wuzhen were built over the water,” the third-grader said. “I felt especially happy because there was no homework over spring break. It was pure relaxation and fun.”
The education authorities reminded schools not to assign written homework and forbade organizing classes under the name of holiday childcare during the spring break.
In Zhejiang, many families have started planning for the spring break linked with the May Day holiday.
Xiong Yuzhen, a resident of Zhejiang’s Quzhou City, decided to take a few days of annual leave with her husband and bring their 10-year-old daughter to Huangshan Mountain in Anhui for the upcoming prolonged eight-day holiday.
“My daughter learned about the mountain in her textbook last year. With the spring break, we can now travel before the peak tourist season and let her see it in person,” said Xiong.
Staggered tourist arrivals also allow operators of popular destinations to allocate resources more effectively and provide higher-quality service. To encourage students to make the most of spring, concrete incentives have been offered, including free admission to scenic spots and free rides on public transport.
Various spring-themed immersive activities are organized at tourist attractions to offer visitors a fresh taste of the season, such as digging and cooking bamboo shoots at a Sichuan bamboo forest resort, or hiking among tea bushes at Mengding Mountain, known for its tea tradition in the province.
To enable working parents to spend spring break with their children, Zhejiang is encouraging employers to adopt more people-centered leave arrangements, including flexible working hours, time off in lieu, and parental leave.
The idea of spring and autumn breaks for primary and secondary schools first emerged in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang. As early as 2004, the city took the lead in piloting the scheme, which was later expanded across the province.
Official data show that during last year’s autumn break, Zhejiang’s railways handled 11.38 million passenger trips, up 22.1 percent year on year, with 751,000 children’s tickets sold — 5.6 times the number for the same period a year earlier, highlighting how the holiday policy stimulates off-season travel. Nearby cities such as Shanghai and Nanjing of east China’s Jiangsu Province also saw rail passenger volumes rise nearly 10 percent, contributing to coordinated regional economic growth.
Over the autumn break, 138 childcare sites were set up across Hangzhou providing daytime care for about 12,000 primary and secondary school students, supporting families in need of childcare during the holiday.
Last month, China’s government work report for the first time called for introducing spring and autumn holidays for primary and secondary school students in localities where conditions permit, elevating this policy from local trials to a national guideline.
Lin Li, an expert with the institute of basic education at the Zhejiang Research Institute of Education Science, said ancient China had a vacation system similar to modern school breaks. The system and the traditional philosophy of “reading 10,000 books and traveling 10,000 miles” form a precious legacy for the country’s education.
“Unique life experiences beyond the school environment can contribute to students’ lifelong development,” Lin said. (Video reporters: Yang Jin, Zheng Keyi; Video editors: Zhang Yueyuan, Liu Xiaorui) ■
