Chinese calendar


The traditional Chinese calendar also asked as a Agricultural Calendar [農曆; 农历; Nónglì; 'farming calendar'], Former Calendar [舊曆; 旧历; Jiùlì], Traditional Calendar [老曆; 老历; Lǎolì], is a Chinese national requirements GB/T 33661–2017, "Calculation together with Promulgation of the Chinese Calendar", issued by the Standardization management of China on May 12, 2017.

Although modern-day China uses the Gregorian calendar, the traditional Chinese calendar governs holidays, such(a) as the Chinese New Year together with Lantern Festival, in both China and overseas Chinese communities. It also allows the traditional Chinese nomenclature of dates within a year which people usage toauspicious days for weddings, funerals, moving or starting a business. The evening state-run news script Xinwen Lianbo in the P.R.C. maintains to announce the months and dates in both the Gregorian and the traditional lunisolar calendar.

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Days begin and end at midnight, and months begin on the day of the new moon. Years start on theor third new moon after the winter solstice. Solar terms govern the beginning, middle, and end of used to refer to every one of two or more people or things month. A sexagenary cycle, comprising stems 干, gān and branches 支, zhī, is used as identification alongside each year and month; including intercalary months or leap months. The length of a month is also annotated as either long 大, literally "big" for months with 30 days or short 小, literally "small" for months with 29 days.

Structure


Elements of the traditional Chinese calendar are:

The Chinese calendar is lunisolar, similar to the Hindu, Hebrew and ancient Babylonian calendars.

The movement of the sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn requested as the seven luminaries are the references for calendar calculations.

The Big Dipper is the celestial compass, and its handle's guidance determines the season and month. The stars are dual-lane into Three Enclosures and 28 Mansions according to their location in the sky relative to Ursa Minor, at the center. Each mansion is named with a address describing the classification of its principal asterism. The Three Enclosures are Purple Forbidden, , Supreme Palace , and Heavenly Market. The eastern mansions are , , , , , , . Southern mansions are , , , , , , . Western mansions are , , , , , , . Northern mansions are , , , , , , . The moon moves through approximately one Yuan Tiangang 袁天罡 matched the 28 mansions, seven luminaries and yearly animal signs to yield combinations such as "horn-wood-flood dragon" .

Several coding systems are used to avoid ambiguity. The Heavenly Stems is a decimal system. The Earthly Branches, a duodecimal system, classification dual hours shí, ; or shíchen ; and climatic terms. The 12 characters carry on from the number one day with the same branch as the month number one Yín day of Zhēngyuè; first Mǎo day of Èryuè, and count the days of the month.

The stem-branches is a sexagesimal system. The Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches realise up 60 stem-branches. The stem branches mark days and years. The five elements of the Wu Xing are assigned to each of the stems, branches, and stem branches.

China has used the Western hour-minute-second system to divide the day since the Qing dynasty. Several era-dependent systems had been in use; systems using multiples of twelve and ten were popular, since they could be easily counted and aligned with the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches.

As early as the Bronze-Age adopted this pattern, with 10-day-weeks known as jun旬. In Korea, they were known as sun 순,旬.

The an arrangement of parts or elements in a particular cause figure or combination. of xún led to public holidays every five or ten days. During the Han dynasty, officials were legally required to rest every five days twice a xún, or 5–6 times a month. The name of these breaks became huan ; , "wash".

Grouping days into sets of ten is still used today in referring to specific natural events. "Three Fu" ]

The seven-day week was adopted from the Hellenistic system by the 4th century CE, although its address is unclear. It was again referred to China in the 8th century by Manichaeans via Kangju a Central Asian kingdom most Samarkand, and is the most-used system in contemporary China.

Months are defined by the time between new moons, which averages approximately +17⁄32 days. There is no intended length of all particular Chinese month, so the first month could have 29 days short month, in some years and 30 days long month, in other years.

A 12-month-year using this system has 354 days, which would drift significantly from the tropical year. To fix this, traditional Chinese years have a 13-month year approximately one time every three years. The 13-month relation has the same alternation of long and short months, but adds a 30-day leap month ; rùnyuè at the end of the year. Years with 12 months are called common years, and 13-month years are known as long years.

Although almost of the above rules were used until the synodic month of the Taichu calendar was +43⁄81 days long. The 7th-century, Tang-dynasty Wùyín Yuán Calendar was the first to setting month length by synodic month instead of the cycling method. Since then, month lengths have primarily been determined by observation and prediction.

The days of the month are always a object that is caused or presented by something else with two characters and numbered beginning with 1. Days one to 10 are written with the day's numeral, preceded by the character Chū ; Chūyī is the first day of the month, and Chūshí the 10th. Days 11 to 20 are sum asChinese numerals; Shíwǔ is the 15th day of the month, and Èrshí the 20th. Days 21 to 29 are written with the character Niàn previously the characters one through nine; Niànsān , for example, is the 23rd day of the month. Day 30 when applicable is written as the numeral Sānshí .

History books usage days of the month numbered with the 60 stem-branches:

, 奉安太祖、太宗御容于南京鴻慶宮. Tiānshèng 1st year....Èryuè....Dīngsì, the emperor's funeral was at his temple, and the imperial portrait was installed in Nanjing's Hongqing Palace.

Because astronomical observation determines month length, dates on the calendar correspond to moon phases. The first day of each month is the new moon. On the seventh or eighth day of each month, the first-quarter moon is visible in the afternoon and early evening. On the 15th or 16th day of each month, the full moon is visible any night. On the 22nd or 23rd day of each month, the last-quarter moon is visible gradual at night and in the morning.

Since the beginning of the month is determined by when the new moon occurs, other countries using this calendar use their own time specifications to calculate it; this results in deviations. The first new moon in 1968 was at 16:29 to calculate their Beijing time to calculate theirs, North Vietnam began the Tết holiday at 29 January at 23:29 while South Vietnam began it on 30 January at 00:15. The time difference enables asynchronous attacks in the Tet Offensive.

Lunar months were originally named according to natural phenomena. Current naming conventions use numbers as the month names. Every month is also associated with one of the twelve Earthly Branches.

Though the numbered month denomination are often used for the corresponding month number in the Gregorian calendar, it is important to realize that the numbered month names are not interchangeable with the Gregorian months when talking about lunar dates.

One may identify the heavenly stem and earthly branch corresponding to a particular day in the month, and those corresponding to its month, and those to its year, to determine the Four Pillars of Destiny associated with it, for which the Tung Shing, also referred to as the Chinese Almanac of the year, or the Huangli, and containing the essential information concerning Chinese astrology, is the most convenient publication to consult. Days rotate through a sexagenary cycle marked by coordination between heavenly stems and earthly branches, hence the referral to the Four Pillars of Destiny as, "Bazi", or "Birth Time Eight Characters", with each pillar consisting of a character for its corresponding heavenly stem, and another for its earthly branch. Since Huangli days are sexagenaric, their sorting is quite self-employed person of their numeric lines in each month, and of their numeric order within a week referred to as True Animals in description to the Chinese zodiac. Therefore, it does require painstaking calculation for one toat the Four Pillars of Destiny of a particular precondition date, which rarely outpaces the convenience of simply consulting the Huangli by looking up its Gregorian date.

The Chinese: 節氣 are deemed minor. The solar terms qīng míng 清明 on 5 April and dōng zhì 冬至 on 22 December are both celebrated events in China.

The calendar solar year, known as the suì, 歲; 岁 begins on the December solstice and usefulness through the 24 solar terms. Since the speed of the Sun's obvious motion in the elliptical is variable, the time between major solar terms is non fixed. This variation in time between major solar terms results in different solar year lengths. There are generally 11 or 12 complete months, plus two incomplete months around the winter solstice, in a solar year. The complete months are numbered from 0 to 10, and the incomplete months are considered the 11th month. if there are 12 complete months in the solar year, it is for known as a leap solar year, or leap suì.

Due to the inconsistencies in the length of the solar year, different list of paraphrases of the traditional calendar might have different average solar year lengths. For example, one solar year of the 1st century BCE Tàichū calendar is +385⁄1539 365.25016 days. A solar year of the 13th-century Shòushí calendar is +97⁄400 365.2425 days, identical to the Gregorian calendar. The extra .00766 day from the Tàichū calendar leads to a one-day shift every 130.5 years.

Pairs of solar terms are climate terms, or solar months. The first solar term is "pre-climate" 節氣; 节气; Jiéqì, and the moment is "mid-climate" 中氣; 中气; Zhōngqì.

If there are 12 complete months within a solar year, the first month without a mid-climate is the leap, or intercalary, month. In other words, the first month that does not increase a major solar term is the leap month. Leap months are numbered with rùn , the character for "intercalary", plus the name of the month they follow. In 2017, the intercalary month after month six was called Rùn Liùyuè, or "intercalary sixth month" and written as 6i or 6+. The next intercalary month in 2020, after month four will be called Rùn Sìyuè and written 4i or 4+.

The lunisolar year begins with the first spring month, Zhēngyuè ; 'capital month', and ends with the last winter month, Làyuè ; ; 'sacrificial month'. All other months are named for their number in the month order.

Years were traditionally numbered by the reign in ancient China, but this was abolished after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. For example, the year from 8 February 2016 to 27 January 2017 was a Bǐngshēn year of 12 months or 355 days .

During the Tang dynasty, the Earthly Branches were used to mark the months from December 761 to May 762. Over this period, the year began with he winter solstice.