9. the Chinese Calendar daiku #9 #9 #9

http://www.tondering.dk/claus/cal/node10.html

<A HREF="http://www.tondering.dk/claus/calendar.html">*** Calendar FAQ</A>

9. The Chinese Calendar

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.
The beginnings of the Chinese calendar can be traced back to the 14th
century BC. Legend has it that the Emperor Huangdi invented the calendar in 2637 BC.
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.
I can recommend visiting Helmer Aslaksen's web site at
http://www.chinesecalendar.net for more information about the Chinese calendar.

9.1 What does the Chinese year look like?

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:

* An ordinary year has 12 months, a leap year has 13 months.
* 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:

Principal Term 1 occurs when the sun's longitude is 330 degrees.
Principal Term 2 occurs when the sun's longitude is 0 degrees.
Principal Term 3 occurs when the sun's longitude is 30 degrees.
etc.
Principal Term 11 occurs when the sun's longitude is 270 degrees.
Principal Term 12 occurs when the sun's longitude is 300 degrees.
Each month carries the number of the Principal Term that occurs in that
month.
In rare cases, a month may contain two Principal Terms; in this case the
months numbers may have to be shifted. Principal Term 11 (Winter Solstice) must
always fall in the 11th month.

All the astronomical calculations are carried out for the meridian 120
degrees east of Greenwich. This roughly corresponds to the east coast of China.
Some variations in these rules are seen in various Chinese communities.

9.2 What years are leap years?

Leap years have 13 months. To determine if a year is a leap year,
calculate the number of new moons between the 11th month in one year (i.e., the month
containing the Winter Solstice) and the 11th month in the following year. If
there are 13 new moons from the start of the 11th month in the first year to
the start of the 11th month in the second year, a leap month must be inserted.
In leap years, at least one month does not contain a Principal Term. The
first such month is the leap month. It carries the same number as the previous
month, with the additional note that it is the leap month.

9.3 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 Stem:

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

These words have no English equivalent.

The second component is a Terrestrial Branch
:
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)

The names of the corresponding animals in the zodiac cycle of 12 animals
are given in parentheses.
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 BC, when the
calendar was supposedly invented. In that year the first 60-year cycle started.

9.4 What is the current year in the Chinese calendar?

The current 60-year cycle started on 2 Feb 1984. That date bears the name
bing-yin in the 60-day cycle, and the first month of that first year bears
the name gui-chou in the 60-month cycle.

This means that the year gui-wei, the 20th year in the 78th cycle,
started on 1 Feb 2003.

---///// __/_//_/ __/_// in the Kali Yuga Yera of 2004 CE,
year 4702 of the Huangdi era,
Year of the Wooden Monkey, _Jia-Shen_...

Nom de Guerre: Hanuman "Stitch/626" Zhang
AIN Resistance Partisan CodeName: "Z23-4C"
WOGeR (Wiley Oriental Gentleperson/Rogue)
BBC (BritishBornChinaman)
Avatar of Sun Wu K'ung, a.k.a. Sun Wukong, a.k.a _Ma-Lau_ ("Monkey
King")
a.k.a. "TricksterGod of the Glorious Anti-Imperialist Chinese Boxers"
the One & Only Real King Kong!!!
http://www.uglychinese.org/war.htm
¡¡¡ TricksterShapeShifterIncarnate !!! >^..^< ';'
;P~~~

=> om hung hanumatay rudratmakai hung phat <=
mantra to Hanuman the Hindu Monkey TricksterGod

==> Ko nahi janat hai jag mein kapi, sankat mochan naam tiharo <==
[Who does not know that in this world oh monkey, thy name is one which
liberates one out of all problems].

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist...
Imitation is suicide." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I Am A Bird, don't try
to tell my wings where to fly.

"I rather be whole than good." - Carl Jung

"It's also a rule of thumb that exceptional talents come at a cost..." -
Richard C. Cytowic, medical expert on synaethesia

<= thee prIs ov eXistenZ iz aetern'l warfaer 'N' kreativ playf'llnizz... =>

"Life is all a great joke, but only the brave ever get the point."
- Kenneth Rexroth
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