There is a school calendar but it is always subject to change. National Day and May 1 are 7 day holidays but often followed by 7 days of classes—2 make up days plus the usual 5. Sports meeting is usually 2 days in November—no classes. Each class will have one day to work on campus each term—the school will not tell you when and often the students do not either. You may show up some day and find you have no class. They can be made to make it up if it is crucial to your teaching program.

There are four holidays in the school year. One week for national day in November and one day for Qingming in April, Labour day in May and Mid-autumn day in Sep. These holidays are actually just three days but the Chinese add another two days and then work the following weekend. This means that you will have to teach the weekend following the week off if you have classes on Thursday or Friday. The University also has a seven week break for Spring Festival (normally in January and February) and a seven or eight week break for the summer.

Depending on what you are teaching you may find that you can finish your teaching some weeks before the end of each semester as time is allocated for exams and marking. You need to be very sure that you have finished all your duties, set and marked exams and given in marks before leaving at the end of the semester. We found that we were able to get at least an extra week off by getting this work finished early.