1. Moon Festival
Also knows as Mid-Autumn Festival, together with Spring Festival, are two big events for Family reunion, which are as important as Thanksgiving and Christmas in US.
One tradition of this festival is to eat Moon Cake, which is only eaten during the festival, kind like Turkey for Thanksgiving.
It's not yet confirmed how this festival has been invented, some people think it related to the timing of Mid-Autumn, which means harvest and people think in that day the Moon is closest to The Earth, so it should be biggest and brightest of the year.
For ancient China is an agricultural country, it's very reasonable to hold a big event to celebrate harvest.
And people had a very serious relationship with The Moon, for Moon means romantic and homesick.
Thoughts of poetries have been dedicated to the Moon.
About 2 thoughts of years ago, China Kingdom had begun to use professional officials to rule the country, most of these officials are educated with classic books, and poetries are important part of it. And after these people passed certification and have been selected to rule, normally they had to transfer into a strange palace rather than their home town.
And as it is said, even the Moon is brighter in my home town. The Moon created a emotional connection to home.
Even now, millions of people have to work and live in the city out of home town, and the Moon means sweat home, it connects people from very far away.
One of the most famous poetries of Moon is written by Su Shi at almost 1 thought years ago:
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Title: 水调歌头 明月几时有 When will the moon be clear and bright?
When will the moon be clear and bright?
With a cup of wine in my hand, I ask the blue sky
what season it would be up the heaven for tonight.
Oh Moon, how I wish to get closer
By riding on the breeze.
Yet I fear your crystal and jade chateau,
Are much too high and cold.
So, let me just dance here with my moonlight shadow.
Rounds and rounds, my red mansion, till you shine on my silk pillow,
Sleepless, but bearing no regrets
Blame not the full moon when people has to apart
Sorrow or joy, be near or far,
Things happen like that, and we still believe in fate.
Toast to you, we are all be blessed
Though distant away, we look at the same moon
And in that way, we have never been apart.
Su Shi (translated by Charles Hartman)
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More information please refer to WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Autumn_Festival
2. National Holidays
From 1 Oct to 7 Oct, it's China's National Holidays, to celebrate the establishment of PRC in 1949.
The government made this policy to encourage people to travel and consume during this holidays, so National Holidays is also been called as Golden Holidays.
A special policy for this year's National Holidays is to cancel highway tolls during the holidays.
In China, the price of a new passage car is around 25% to 100% more expensive than same model in US. The gas price is almost twice of US, and the highway tolls costs almost same money of gas, that means if people chose to travel by car, the spending is almost 4 times of in US.
Highway tolls means a lot of money, which is almost 1 billion US Dollars from 30 Sep to 7 Oct.
Till the end of 2011, there're over 10 million passenger cars in China, and a lot of them want to take the advantage, so lots of cars were trapped in the free highways, people were stopped for hours, and some walk dogs, or play badminton just in highway, or use telescope the check the status ahead.
And almost 100 people were killed in car accidents everyday.
Yet the worst traffic situation was happened outside Capital city Beijing in 2010, cars were trapped over 62 miles for 12 days.
As for this year's Golden Holidays, another issue is people crowded almost everywhere, here're photos taken in Forbidden City and The Great Wall.
So don't bother to travel China during any China's National Holidays, I'm not kidding.
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