18/31: Chinese Lunar Calendar
The real name is Lunisolar Calendar, and it’s followed in the biggest countries of East Asia, China, Japan, Mongolia, Korea and Vietnam are some examples.
It’s hard to get used to it. Most of us would be more familiar with the Gregorian Calendar, a solar calendar based in the movement of the earth around the sun. Every time the earth arrives to the same spot another year is counted, every four years you have a leap day that’s added to the shortest month, and every 400 years this leap year is ignored three times. It’s divided by months of 30/31 days, which are supposed to be the duration of a full lunar phase, but as we know, this doesn’t happen most of the time, but it’s enough for dividing our year.
In the other hand you have the lunisolar calendar, which follows the moon phases through the years to specify the beginning and end of a month, depending on the style but usually it would look also at the constellations that can be seen through the moon phases. I’m going to talk more about the Chinese calendar.
But before, you need to know that in every day life the Gregorian calendar is the rule, people use the western calendar for their daily life and the lunar calendar is used only for holidays and special events (like weddings, funerals and other things where luck is needed).
That’s the reason why most of the Chinese holidays don’t have a fixed date or can happen in different months, because they are based in the moon phases which don’t coincide with the Gregorian months all the time. Recently with the popular use of the western calendar new holidays have appeared using the name of the days and month, which in combination can create a sentence similar in sound to a Chinese phrase, examples can be May 20, which in Chinese is pronounced wǔ èr líng (five two zero) which sounds similar to wǒ ài nǐ which means I love you, so this day has become the new love day.
The Chinese calendar, like the Gregorian, counts a full day from midnight no midnight, but each month starts with the new moon (when the moon is not visible in the sky) and ends with the next new moon, being the full moon the middle of the mont. The Chinese New Year happens with the dark moon in the middle of the winter solstice and spring equinox, which usually happens at the end of January or the beginning of February.
Months usually have 29 or 30 days depending on the year and period. Days are counted from 1 the first night of the new moon and the count ends in the last phase of the visible moon, then the counts start again.
For the Chinese zodiac, you must know the popular version of the twelve animals, depending on the date you were born an animal would be your zodiac, usually for easy approximation they would take the year you were born, but for people who were born in January this might not be the case. But the real zodiac has another two variables, you are born under one of the five Chinese elements which are wood, fire, earth, water and metal; and you can be born in the yin (dark) or in the yang (bright), so with this combinations a complete Chinese zodiac cycle is completed every 60 years. When the Yang Wood Rat year starts again.
It’s hard to transform from Chinese to Gregorian calendar, there are some tools online but they are different approaches because there’s no easy way of doing it, but most of the webs online use a simplified version.
The current Chinese calendar is the one adopted by the government in 1912 and it was created during the Qing Dynasty in the 17 century, it’s called Shixian Calendar.
Because of both calendars existing at the same time usually Chinese people would have two birthday dates, one fixed with the Gregorian calendar which is the one used for legal documents and the Chinese one which is fixed on the exact moon day and moon month the person was born.
This is just a small glance of how the lunar calendar works, of course I’m not an expert and I’m just getting used to not fixed holidays, but it’s an interesting and different way of looking at things, living with two calendars seems complicated but it’s just a different way of living.
This story is part of my 31/31 challenge. Following a friend’s idea I will publish at least one story every day for the next month.
If you see any error please let me know, the idea is to stop over-reviewing my stories before publishing them.
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