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Chinese New Year is the main holiday of the year for more than one quarter of the world's population. Although the People's Republic of China uses the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes, a special Chinese calendar is used for determining festivals. Various Chinese communities around the world also use this calendar. At right, a large dragon lantern glows at a festival for Chinese New Year at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial. Taipei, Taiwan.

The beginnings of the Chinese calendar can be traced back to the 14th century B.C.E. Legend has it that the Emperor Huangdi invented the calendar in 2637 B.C.E.

The Chinese calendar is based on exact astronomical observations of the longitude of the sun and the phases of the moon. This means that principles of modern science have had an impact on the Chinese calendar.



The Chinese calendar - like the Hebrew - is a combined solar/lunar calendar in that it strives to have its years coincide with the tropical year and its months coincide with the synodic months. It is not surprising that a few similarities exist between the Chinese and the Hebrew calendar:
o An ordinary year has 12 months, a leap year has 13 months.
o An ordinary year has 353, 354, or 355 days, a leap year has 383, 384, or 385 days.

When determining what a Chinese year looks like, one must make a number of astronomical calculations:

First, determine the dates for the new moons. Here, a new moon is the completely "black" moon (that is, when the moon is in conjunction with the sun), not the first visible crescent used in the Islamic and Hebrew calendars. The date of a new moon is the first day of a new month.

Secondly, determine the dates when the sun's longitude is a multiple of 30 degrees. (The sun's longitude is 0 at Vernal Equinox, 90 at Summer Solstice, 180 at Autumnal Equinox, and 270 at Winter Solstice.) These dates are called the Principal Terms and are used to determine the number of each month:
How Does One Count Years?

Unlike most other calendars, the Chinese calendar does not count years in an infinite sequence. Instead years have names that are repeated every 60 years.

(Historically, years used to be counted since the accession of an emperor, but this was abolished after the 1911 revolution.)

Within each 60-year cycle, each year is assigned name consisting of two components:

The first component is a Celestial Stemm. These words have no English equivalent:

1. jia 6. ji
2. yi 7. geng
3. bing 8. xin
4. ding 9. ren
5. wu 10. gui

The second component is a Terrestrial Branch. The names of the corresponding animals in the zodiac cycle of 12 animals are given in parentheses.

1. zi (rat) 7. wu (horse)
2. chou (ox) 8. wei (sheep)
3. yin (tiger) 9. shen (monkey)
4. mao (hare, rabbit) 10. you (rooster)
5. chen (dragon) 11. xu (dog)
6. si (snake) 12. hai (pig)

Each of the two components is used sequentially. Thus, the 1st year of the 60-year cycle becomes jia-zi, the 2nd year is yi-chou, the 3rd year is bing-yin, etc. When we reach the end of a component, we start from the beginning: The 10th year is gui-you, the 11th year is jia-xu (restarting the Celestial Stem), the 12th year is yi-hai, and the 13th year is bing-zi (restarting the Terrestrial Branch). Finally, the 60th year becomes gui-hai.

This way of naming years within a 60-year cycle goes back approximately 2000 years. A similar naming of days and months has fallen into disuse, but the date name is still listed in calendars.

It is customary to number the 60-year cycles since 2637 B.C.E., when the calendar was supposedly invented. In that year the first 60-year cycle started.

2006-09-05 11:53:08 · answer #1 · answered by sharkscue 3 · 0 0

Like what *details* of what actual dates are you looking for? Presently in Central Europe it is the Day of the Earth Dog in the Hour of the Water Rat of the Fire Ape month in the year of the Fire Dog (6 Sept. 2006 0:54 CEDT). Anything else?!

2006-09-05 18:53:50 · answer #2 · answered by jlbackstop 6 · 0 0

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