The Chinese calendar is known far beyond the Celestial Empire. This is a unique creation of Chinese astrologers, who described the earthly path with filigree accuracy and derived the rules for the relationship between the planet and other luminaries. It is on astronomical principles that the famous old calendar is based.
Instructions
Step 1
The Chinese calendar is subdivided into solar and solar-lunar. The first can be attributed more to agricultural. And the second is known in such variants as the Xia calendar, which is popular in East Asia, and the Qin Dynasty Calendar, invented in 221 BC by Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Today in China, the Gregorian calendar is also widely used, but the lunar one still determines the days of national celebrations: the New Year or the Mid-Autumn Festival. And also dictates the start time of field work.
Step 2
The Chinese call the New Year the "Spring Festival". Its date is variable, but it necessarily coincides with the interval of January 21-February 20. Each new year is counted from the day of the first new moon after the winter solstice. The old calendar does not know the concept of a "calendar year", so the Chinese use a sixty-year cycle, the starting point of which is considered to be 2397 BC. Accordingly, now - 4711 according to the Chinese calendar, which will end on 2015-18-02. Although it is more accurate to consider not years, but cycles, then 2014 according to the Gregorian calendar is the 74th cycle, the 3rd year.
Step 3
It is extremely difficult for a European to independently calculate Chinese cycles and years, however, and in the Celestial Empire, few people calculate them himself. Translation tables and adapting cycles to modern realities come to the rescue in working with the calendar.
Step 4
After entering the broad masses of the Gregorian (new) calendar, the lunar began to be called the old one. The "trace" of the Chinese calendar can be clearly traced among other peoples. For example, the Korean calendar is completely similar to the Chinese one, in Vietnamese there are slight changes (the Cat replaced the Rabbit in the zodiacal circle), in the Japanese the calculation principle was changed.
Step 5
Some elements of the old calendar of the Celestial Empire are also used by Islamic peoples. For example, the names of animals, which were translated into Turkish, began to be used for keeping records of officials-historians from the Middle Ages to the present day. In Iran, the lunar calendar was used by peasants and those who collected taxes, but only until 1925, in which a ban on this type of calendar was introduced in the country.
Step 6
A closer to the modern version of the Chinese calendar was approved by Emperor Wu-di in 104 BC. The calendar was called Taichu, and the era of the U-di reign was also named, which means "Great Beginning".
Step 7
The scientist Zhang Heng made a great contribution to the development of Chinese calendar systems. He owns many discoveries: he was the first to try to count the number of stars and pointed out that the Moon, most likely, does not have its own light, but only reflects the light of another star.
Step 8
12 animals in the ancient Chinese calendar were used to mark months, and later to determine the time of day. When in everyday life the Chinese discuss a famous person or communicate with each other, the question about age can simply be answered in the year of whom he was born, for example, in the year of the Cat. A more accurate age can be determined by the appearance.
Step 9
The Xia calendar is used when choosing a wedding day or opening an institution. The "map of fate" of each Chinese is also made using the Xia calendar. The easiest way to distinguish the lunar calendar from the solar one is to see how it is described. If in hieroglyphs, then it is solar, and if in numbers, you can be sure that this is a lunar calendar.
