Jilin Makes Annual Snow Holiday Permanent for Schools

Students across northeast China’s Jilin Province will receive a five-day “snow holiday” every year after the provincial government made a 2025 pilot program permanent, pairing three working days off in December with adjacent weekends while rolling out free skiing and free admission to tourist attractions.

The policy, detailed in the 《吉林省冰雪假期工作实施方案》 (Jilin Province Snow/Ice Holiday Work Implementation Plan), was announced at a provincial government briefing on September 11, according to Xinhua News. Under the plan, all students in the compulsory education stage—primary and junior secondary school—will take three working days off between December 1 and December 20 each year, which combined with adjacent weekends creates a five-day mini-vacation.

A Permanent Policy, A Flexible Window

The new plan institutionalizes and replaces the one-off 《吉林省2025年”冰雪假期”专项工作方案》 that was first tested from December 3 to 7, 2025. Rather than fixing a single date block, the permanent version devolves scheduling to local authorities, who will stagger the holiday based on weather conditions, teaching progress, and ice and snow venue capacity.

“The snow holiday applies to all compulsory-education students in the province; specific holiday times will not be one-size-fits-all, but arranged by localities on a staggered basis according to weather conditions, teaching progress, and ice/snow venue supply,” said Jin Zhenlin, deputy director of the Jilin Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, at the briefing.

The holiday maintains what officials described as its core positioning of “relaxing the body and mind, participating in ice and snow” (放松身心、参与冰雪), encouraging students to skate, ski, and visit museums and cultural venues for educational research activities.

A Package of Supporting Benefits

The policy is paired with a set of benefits designed to lower the cost of participation. Under the plan, public cultural, museum, and sports venues will open free of charge and with extended hours for primary and secondary students. County and district governments will purchase services so that each compulsory-education student can experience skiing or skating free of charge three times, for three hours each, at qualified venues. Students also receive free first-entry admission to all operating A-level tourist attractions in the province, three times.

Local authorities are further encouraged to guide cinemas, bookstores, and fitness centers to offer student-exclusive discounts, packages, and all-in-one cards.

China National Radio reported that public cultural, museum, and sports venues will open free for students during the holiday, with each student entitled to the three free skiing or skating experiences and three free visits to A-level scenic spots.

Addressing the Parent Accompanyment Problem

A key concern for working families—children having a holiday while parents do not—was addressed head-on at the briefing. Huang Yijie, deputy director of the Jilin Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security, clarified that the parent accompaniment leave is not a new dedicated holiday, but a convenience measure that optimizes the use scenarios of the existing paid annual leave system.

The design aims to resolve what officials described as a livelihood pain point: students having a snow holiday while working parents lack the time to accompany them. By optimizing leave arrangements, the policy seeks to guarantee parents time with their children without affecting the normal operations of their work units.

Schools Open Their Doors, Not Their Textbooks

Meanwhile, schools will organize childcare services and open campus activity spaces during the holiday. Critically, Liu Qingchuan, chief inspector of the Jilin Provincial Department of Education, said schools will not organize collective classes or make-up classes and will not assign written homework, in a direct effort to reduce students’ academic burden.

Schools are also encouraged to open campus ice and snow training rooms and to flood their own ice rinks, giving students on-site access to winter sports facilities.

The 2025 Pilot Showed Strong Economic Effects

The permanent policy builds on a well-documented first run. During the December 3–7, 2025 snow holiday, scenic ticket bookings in Jilin rose 13 percent year-on-year, according to data cited by the People’s Daily Overseas Edition. The Changbaishan Huamei resort reported hotel occupancy above 70 percent on the first day—above historical levels—receiving 1,468 visitors.

Major ski areas saw a surge of student and family traffic. The Songhua Lake Resort reportedly received more than 3,000 student-and-parent visits per day, with ski trail utilization up 60 percent compared to ordinary days. The province opened 15 direct bus lines from cities to ski resorts, extending operations to 21:00, and added ice-snow tourist trains from Changchun and Jilin stations, adding roughly 12,000 daily passenger capacity.

As Guangming Daily observed during the pilot, ski resorts, ice rinks, and A-level scenic areas offered students three free hours of daily access, with accompanying parents receiving a 30 percent discount on ski and first-entry tickets.

From ‘Resource-Driven’ to ‘Population-Driven’

Behind the holiday is a broader strategic shift. Jilin’s ice and snow industry has historically relied on out-of-town tourists, a model vulnerable to seasonal and weather-driven swings. Officials and analysts frame the snow holiday as moving the province from a “resource-driven” model, dependent on natural endowment, toward a “population-driven” one that cultivates a generation that skis, loves, and consumes ice and snow.

“The snow holiday breaks the previous single ‘out-of-town tourist’ consumption structure, making local students a new driving force for activating ice-snow scenarios,” said Wang Ning, a senior researcher at the ChinaScope Think Tank, as quoted in a long-form analysis of the policy. “The snow holiday policy is essentially an institutional innovation by Jilin to promote high-quality development of the ice-snow economy.”

The measure connects to national strategies tied to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, including the push to “drive 300 million people to participate in ice-and-snow sports” and the slogan that “ice and snow are also mountains of gold and silver.” It also follows a March 2025 central government directive that encouraged localities with suitable conditions to explore setting up spring and autumn holidays for primary and secondary schools.

Jilin is not alone in experimenting with winter school breaks. Xinjiang’s Urumqi and Altay announced snow holidays from December 1 to 5, 2025—forming breaks of up to nine days when combined with weekends—while Inner Mongolia’s Hulunbuir has also announced similar measures.

What to Watch

Several questions remain as the permanent policy moves from announcement to implementation. How will the flexible December 1–20 window be coordinated across urban and rural prefectures with vastly different infrastructure? What mechanisms will ensure ski resorts and scenic areas honor the free-access commitments? And will the paid-leave optimization face resistance from private-sector employers?

What is clear is that Jilin has committed to a long-term bet: that putting a generation of children on skis will build not only healthier students but a durable consumer base for the province’s winter economy. The 2026–2027 snow season, the first under the permanent plan, will offer the earliest evidence of whether that bet pays off.