Population

- By the end of 1949, there were 542 million people in China.

- By the end of 2008, the population of the Chinese mainland was 1.328 billion.

Patriotic-Sounding Names

- 49,047 Chinese people born between 1900 and 1949 were named "Jian Guo" (literally "Founding the Country").

- 8,240 people had "Jian Guo" in their names in 1949 alone.

- More than 290,000 people nationwide shared the name "Jian Guo" in the 1960s.

- Currently, there are 400,000 people named "Guo Qing" (literally "National Day Celebration"), and 960,000 people named "Jian Guo."

National Flag Firework

The world's largest national flag firework explodes over Liuyang City, central China's Hunan Province, on May 19 (XINHUA)

A huge firework in the shape of China's national flag was successfully exploded over Liuyang, better known worldwide as the City of Fireworks, in central China's Hunan Province on May 19, 2009. The "flag"--42 meters in length and 28 meters in width--set a new Guinness World Record as the world's largest national flag firework.

National Day Vacation

People on the Chinese mainland will have an eight-day National Day vacation from October 1 to October 8 this year. The legal National Day vacation in China runs from October 1 to 3. But since 2000, there have been three seven-day "Golden Week Vacations" each year, one each for Spring Festival, May 1 and October 1, in order to promote tourism. In 2009, the single-day break for Mid-Autumn Festival (the 15th day of the 8th month in the Chinese lunar calendar), a traditional occasion for family reunions, happens to fall on October 3. This overlap extends the week-long vacation to eight days.