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China's National Day

1 October, the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. It opens the Golden Week holiday, the largest movement of people in the world outside the Lunar New Year.

When it falls

1 October, the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. It opens Golden Week, a seven-day holiday.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

Mao declared the republic from the Tiananmen rostrum on 1 October 1949, and the date has been the national day since.

The military parade is not annual: it is held on the round anniversaries, and the years between are marked with flowers, concerts and the flag ceremony rather than with hardware.

How the day is kept

  • The flag is raised at sunrise in Tiananmen Square before a crowd that queues overnight for it.
  • Golden Week that follows produces the largest domestic travel season in the world outside the Lunar New Year — hundreds of millions of trips.
  • Public buildings and squares are banked with flower displays, and the day is a fixture for weddings.

More national days

The Phala almanac shows this day where it falls for your own city — sunrise, tithi and all five limbs, anywhere on earth. See how the almanac works →