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Q: What percentage of Chinese laborers actually had May 1st off?
Yesterday was apparently a state-backed holiday for the international workers day in China. However, as far as I could see, an awful lot of people were still working. Who actually takes this day off here? I saw a bunch of white collar professionals strolling around, but almost all of the shops I passed by were open and fully staffed by bored/annoyed looking young Chinese. What constitutes a "worker" here? Does it refer specifically to the migrant laborers who work in construction? Because I saw them working yesterday too. Do people here understand the cruel irony of this situation?
May 1st is a "shopping festival" in China for those with Money to spend.
That being said. Mon-Wed this week was eerily quite in parts of town, almost none of the busses run by factories taking employees to work where on the streets, less shipping containers being driven around, so I guess that means some have gotten some time off.
All those working in the malls are of course forced to be there. As May 1st is actually am official public holiday, people are typically entitled to overpay if they are at work (the same applies to some of the days around Spring Festival etc) As Mon-Tues are not official days off, the people who had those days off are the ones that would then have worked the preceding weekend.
In my country, Shopping malls are not open at all, or only few of them.
Buses, trains have limited runs ( "holidays mode"), public transport in bigger cities have "sunday mode", No banks, offices nor small shops open either. I love the peace all around at those days, national holidays.
really only basic service for general public is running, but anything other is closed, resting and enjoy the 1 day of Labour fest. without the need of work in Saturday and Sunday more. If you need buy milk or so, there will be open only Vietnamese shop or Tesco on the end of metro line...
Seems I can not understand something... 
Yesterday, I met several neighbors of ours, and all of them asked me same question :
" Today you have rest ? " I talk to my wife, "wtf, about 60% of the people in the whole globe do not work today, why i got this dumb questions from morning till evening ? " the last was at 7.30pm when we returned from walking around ( and buying some bread in shop ) 
i think only americans work on this day may 1st, how about other english countries?
Scandinavian:
which makes little sense as the day has it's roots in Chicago
ambivalentmace:
most americans probably dont know that and the military parades on tv from china and russia do not put the holiday in a good light with average americans so the holiday is not a good point of discussion over a game of darts or bowling.
Was it a national holiday? If it is not then it is not official. I do not think that China has got around to too much to do with labor laws. The US has very few official holidays, not like the Europeans. It seems that when I go to Germany etc there is a holiday every weekend Alt Stat Fest, Neu stat fest , Beer Fest on and on. They get five weeks vacation from the day they start work. In the US you would have to work for a single company for ten years to get four weeks holiday and that is if you are lucky. Franck3
GuilinRaf:
In the US you get 15 days per year (not counting weekends).
it's hard to say if I were to make a guestimate I would have to say 20% give or take! I went to the hotspring the other day and the cooks and workers outside were working not to mention the other workers at the hotspring such as the lifeguard for the pool, and customer service.
