Railway passenger records set to tumble as holiday week charges ahead

China is closed on Monday, the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year, and will not re-open until next Monday or Tuesday, the seventh and eighth days (chuqi and chuba) of the Lunar New Year.

Government bureaucrats will be doing even less work this week than usual - though this is hard to believe. In fairness, it should also be noted that the same is true of some journalists - the South China Morning Post print edition will not be published on Tuesday or Wednesday.

As penance for this brief reprieve, however, we will subsequently have to hang out at train stations and shopping malls, writing the same stories we did last year about how many people are travelling and how much money they are spending.

Starting today, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets are closed for two full weeks. They reopen on February 25.

One explanation for their long suspension is that traders in Shenzhen hail from all over the country, and need extra time to make their trips home and back. Others say the markets were once closed for an extra week to facilitate a technical upgrade. Everybody likes the extra time off so much it became a permanent perk.

Officially, only tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday are recognised as holiday days on the mainland. But in order to give everyone a seven-day leave, a curious time-swapping arrangement was concluded over the weekend.