Six More Days of Marriage Leave, Yet the Date Still Has to Be Chosen: China's Taiwan Region and the Old Craft of "Looking at Days"
My cousin posted a screenshot of a news story in the family group chat, with one line of her own: "Six more days off, and my mother is busier than ever."
On 16 September 2026 the labour affairs department of China's Taiwan region gave notice of an amendment that would extend workers' marriage leave from the current 8 days to 14; on 17 September it explained further that the change is expected to take effect from 1 October (as of this article's filing on 17 September 2026, the department's formal announcement remains the final word). There is a detail in the rules that is easy to overlook: when marriage leave falls on a regular day off (the weekly rest days that the region's rules guarantee workers), a rest day or a public holiday, those days, on which nobody works anyway, are not counted against the 14, so the run of consecutive days off in practice is longer still (per a 17 September report by Taiwan's Central News Agency).
My cousin's "busier" has a reason. From the day things were settled, her mother had to go and "look at the days".
"Looking at the days" is also called date selection. The old-fashioned local sequence runs roughly like this: after the proposal, the two birth charts are matched (Ba Zi); then the groom's side asks someone to pick a date; only then are the wedding invitations printed. In choosing, people generally avoid the seventh lunar month (called "ghost month" locally) and avoid the categories of days held to clash with the couple, then turn to a date-selection manual for an auspicious day marked "suitable for marriage"; the more particular traditional readers also consult the Jiaqu Zhoutang Tu (Wedding Hall Chart). Once the date is fixed, an hour and a day for "setting the bridal bed" still have to be settled.
What is interesting is that more leave has not made any of this simpler. My cousin said she had floated the idea of "just registering it and being done", and her mother answered: "Registration is a formality; a wedding is a date."
If you too are worrying over some "date" — a wedding, a move, an opening, a contract — 占卜迷指 can recommend a method for your trouble and lay out the factors that need looking at one by one, with results you can export and take away. In the end the day is still yours to choose; you just have one more sheet of paper in hand.
Sources
- Taiwan's Central News Agency (16 September 2026: the labour affairs department to announce marriage leave raised from 8 days to 14): https://www.cna.com.tw/news/ahel/202609160341.aspx
- Taiwan's Central News Agency (17 September 2026: marriage leave from 8 days to 14, expected to start on 1 October; regular days off and rest days not counted): https://www.cna.com.tw/news/ahel/202609170053.aspx
- Taiwan's Central News Agency (17 September 2026: marriage-leave Q&A): https://www.cna.com.tw/news/ahel/202609170090.aspx
- United Daily News, Taiwan (27 May 2026: the labour affairs department publishes family-friendly workplace measures, proposing marriage leave extended to 14 days and maternity leave to 12 weeks): https://udn.com/news/story/124897/9528853
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