New Year's Eve will become a legal holiday if a proposal gets passed by the National People's Congress next month.

Kang Yinlei, a deputy to the Guangdong Provincial People's Congress, will urge the National People's Congress to consider making New Year's Eve the last day in Chinese lunar calendar and one of the most important for families a public holiday.

It is a long cherished tradition that Chinese families celebrate with a reunion dinner.

It has ignited a heated online discussion, and some 98.8 percent of 33,757 online respondents on Sina.com supported the public holiday proposal.

Most of the online survey's respondents said working on New Year's Eve neglected traditional Chinese customs and people were not focused on work that day anyway.

And for many it was a last-minute nightmare making it home time for dinner with the family.

"There is no reason why the most important day for Chinese in a whole year is not designated as a legal holiday," Liu Xiangrong, an employee with a chamber of commerce in Beijing, said.

Wang Xin, an employee with a training center in Beijing agreed.

"People on duty simply do some cleaning work in the office that morning on New Year's Eve and then leave for home in the afternoon," she said.

This year, her company granted the employees leave two days before the New Year's Eve.

In fact, despite the requirement of official document, most institutions and companies have already quietly adopted their own earlier holiday policies to give employees a bit of extra time off.

(China Daily February 16, 2007)