The long holiday also benefited domestic destinations.

"Trips to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Yunnan Province and the Tibet Autonomous Region all sold quite well because of the longer holiday plans of our customers," said Xu Xiaolei, a senior manager of China CYTS Tours.

Jason Song, a 26-year-old employee of consumer goods company P&G's customer business development department in Hangzhou, told China Daily he successfully asked for an annual leave of one week, which combined the two holidays together.

"I'm planning to go on a road trip in Xinjiang," he said. "Many of my friends will go with me as we all have a 16-day vacation."

Song said he started the long vacation plan early this year. His boss quickly approved his annual leave request, he said.

But holiday arrangements have also proven to be difficult for those who have not been able to "combine" the two vacation periods like what Song did.

Xinhua News Agency reported that the long holidays are divided in this way: Employees must work on Sept 19 and Sept 25 to make up for the two days of vacation they will get during the three-day Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, because the festival actually only allows for a day off work.

Likewise, people must also go to work on Sept 26 and Oct 9 to "repay" the days "borrowed" from the weeklong National Day holiday, because it only allows for three days off.

After the National Day holiday, people should go to work for two days before getting a day off.

"I'm bewildered when I see the holiday arrangement. It's hard to follow," Sun Jing, an editor at the Beijing-based Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, was quoted as saying.

The arrangement, billed as "the most complicated of holiday plans" by the Beijing Times, has not occurred in the past several years as the two holidays usually overlapped.

A spokesman for the National Development and Reform Commission said that the arrangement was based on different factors - safeguarding the legal rights of citizens to enjoy public holidays and preventing them from working too long - that made it difficult for the two holidays to be merged and used consecutively this year.

(China Daily September 11, 2010)