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What's a calendar? A calendar is a system for measuring time, from hours and minutes, to months and days, and finally to years and centuries. The terms of hour, day, month, year and century are all units of time measurements of a calender system. How does one measure time? Distance can be measured with a stick. Time is measured by observing the movements of the sun, moon and stars. People in all major cultures have since discovered this fact since pre-historical time. What's a 'Day?' Every one knows about the rotation of the Earth about its axis, which causes (apparent) movement of the Sun from East to West across the sky. So we define one cycle of movement of the Sun as one 'Day.' The Chinese word is very straight forward and calls one day as one 'Sun.' More... What's a 'Week?' The concept of a "week" is less important in the Chinese calendar. The ancient Egyptians had a ten-day week, and so did the Chinese. The ancient Assyrians invented the seven-day week, and the names of days of the week that we use even today are based on a system of assigning the five planets visible to the naked eye, the sun, and the moon to the seven days of the week. More ... What's a 'Month?' For this we look at the Moon! Each night, the appearance of the Moon changes. From 'new moon' to 'full moon' and back. So we define a 'Month' as the time it takes for the Moon to go through one cycle of motion. As it happens, this takes about 29.5 days. So we round the month to be either 29 days or 30 days. Again, in the Chinese language a month is simply a 'Moon.' The English word "month" is derived from the word "moon." More... What about a 'Year?' The next larger unit of measurement of time is the 'Year.' For this we go back to the Sun again. Careful observations reveal that the over a period of many months (12), the position of the Sun shifts from very high overhead to a much lower point at Noon time. The length of daylight time also changes from longer to shorter. Even more importantly, the weather changes from hot to cold, giving rise to the four seasons of Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. It is logical, therefore, to define the length of this time period as a 'Year.' The Chinese word for 'Year' is 'Nian', written as . Since the word 'Sun' has already assigned the meaning of a 'day', a new word has to be used to denote the 'year.' How long is a year? A little more than 365 days. In 104 B.C. the length of a year was determined to an accuracy of 365.2502 days. By 480 A.D., Ju Chongzhi refined it to 365.2428 days, or 52 seconds more than the modern value of 365.2422 days. To put it another way, in 2,000 years the total discrepancy is less than one day! Together with the voluminous annals of Chinese historians, the Chinese has provided the most accurate and uninterrupted time-line records. Although 0.24 day does not look like much, over many years it becomes significant. How do we round it to a whole number of days? There are several different schemes to do this. The Chinese scheme is called the 'lunar calendar', and the nearly standard calendar is called the 'solar' calendar system. Chinese Lunar Calendar A normal year has 12 lunar months, with the length of lunar month defined above. In order to make up to 365.24 days, an extra month is added during the Leap Year. Solar or Western Calendar In the Solar Calendar system, a normal year has 365 days. Every 4-th year, an extra day is added in February to make up to 365.25 days. This is called the Leap Year. Each year still has 12 months, but the number of days in each month vary illogically, so the start of each month does not coincide with the phase of the New Moon at all. Decades, Century, Millennium vs Great Year, Cycle and Epoch For historical discussions of long periods, longer units of time are handy. In the Western calendar terminology: Decade = 10 years Century = 100 years Millennium = 1,000 years For example, 2006 is in the Third Mllenmium, 21-th Century, first decade and 6-th year. In Chinese calendar terminology: Great Year = 12 years Cycle = 5 Great Years = 60 years Epoch = 60 Cycles = 60 x 60 years = 3,600 years Year 2006 is now in the Second Epoch, 18th Cycle, 23rd Year. By this method of counting, both the Gregorian Calendar and the Chinese Calendar must pick arbitrarily its Year One. Thus, we are in Year 2006 and Year 4703 respectively. Metal - Fixity, strength of will, fluency of speechChinese wisdom sees a polarity in every element, a negative and a positive side, an essentially feminine (passive, represented by -) or masculine (active, represented by +) disposition, or in Chinese terminology, Yin and Yang. Consequently, each element is repeated twice in succession so that it presents in the first year its Yang, or masculine side, and reverses the next year into its Yin polar opposite. This chart, taken from the Chinese perpetual calendar, lays out each year together with that year's animal sign, its element and its masculine or feminine principle. |
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