Ancient Chinese dating methods Three methods are proposed

1, chronology

China's ancient times was initially in accordance with the reign of the king's chronology, such as the first year of King Xuan of Zhou (827 BC) and so on. Liu Che, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, began to use the year number chronicle, the year of his accession to the throne, called Jianyuan yuan year (140 BC), followed by Jianyuan two years, Jianyuan three years, etc., to replace the year number on the new chronicle.

History has used the number of years, there are about eight hundred. There are many ancient medical books that use this method of dating, such as Song - Liu Fang "young young new book" Li Geng preface inscription as "Shaoxing twenty years in September a few hope". Shaoxing was the reign name of the Southern Song Dynasty's Gaozong Zhao Gong. The advantage of this method is that the chronology is clear and can directly indicate the specific year.

2, stem and branch chronology

With the "Heavenly Stem" and "Earthly Branches" one by one to the chronology of the method. Its characteristics are:

A, the celestial stem and the earth's branch of each one of the composition of a chronicle, such as "A Zi year", "B ugly year" and so on.

B, the matching of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches will always be singular to singular, even to even, with no possibility of parity.

C, 60 years a cycle, week after week.

3, the Chinese zodiac chronology

The twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac began in the Eastern Han Dynasty, before the Han Dynasty has not been recorded. Zodiac can be used to project a person's age, the year of birth, history has also used the Zodiac dating method, such as the Yuan Dynasty, there is a "Taiding rat year" (Taiding is the Yuan Taiding emperor's year, the rat year that is, the year of the Azi, for the year 1324 AD) records.

Expanded Information

The calendar based on the lunar month is the lunisolar calendar, and the calendar based on the solar year is the solar calendar, which is not a purely lunisolar calendar but a combined lunisolar and yin-yang calendar in ancient China. In the 12 months of a lunar year, there are 6 big months of 30 days and 6 small months of 29 days. The reason for the difference between large and small months is that the phases of the moon vary between 29 and 30 days (the exact value is 29.53 days).

There are 12 months a **** 354 days per year, but this is not enough for 1 solar year. The actual time it takes the earth to go around the sun is 365.2422 days, which is more than 11 days more than the sum of the 12 months of the lunar calendar.

So every 3 years on the lunar calendar there is a difference of 1 month's time from the actual solar year, so 1 month is added every 3 years, called a leap month. This is so that the average calendar year is approximately equal to 1 solar year and roughly matches the natural seasons.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Ancient dating methods