While ordinary mainlanders enjoy a week of leisure and sightseeing over the National Day holidays, there's no rest for the country's political elite.
All eyes will be on the Communist Party's annual plenum of Central Committee members, which starts on October 15. The four-day meeting in Beijing has far-reaching implications for the direction of the mainland's economic growth and its political leadership in the coming years.
The fifth plenum of the party's 17th Central Committee is important for two reasons. The first, well-publicised one is that the meeting will discuss and approve a draft of the nation's 12th Five-Year Plan - the only item on the agenda according to the official announcement.
The second reason - which has not been officially announced but is the subject of wide speculation - is that the plenum will also confirm the promotion of Vice-President Xi Jinping to vice-chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, paving the way for him to take over the nation's top leadership post in two years.
The five-year plan, one of the few relics left over from the command economy days, is less potent than in the past. Then, the production of everything from transistor radios to locomotives was fixed without taking into consideration market conditions. Now, its implications are still huge as the plan sets the tone and direction of the economy for the five-year period.
The 12th plan, which covers the years from 2011 to 2015, is important as the mainland leadership is reportedly planning to push for a roadmap which outlines major structural changes in the way the economy grows.