The Origin of the Chinese Lunar Calendar

The Chinese Lunar Calendar is a yin and yang calendar based on the movement of both the sun and the moon, so it cannot fully reflect the sun's movement cycle, and since China is an agricultural society, agricultural production needs to be strictly aware of the movement of the sun, so the people formulated the "twenty-four seasons" based on the movement of the sun.

Origin of the Lunar Calendar

From the Ancient Stem and Branch Calendar to the Western Calendar (Gerry Calendar) at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the calendar has been revised many times in history, and more than 102 calendars have been produced in the history of China, which have had a significant impact on the culture and civilization of China, such as the Stem and Branch Calendar (Regnal Calendar), the Xia Calendar, the Shang Calendar (Yin Calendar), the Zhou Calendar, the Western Han Dynasty Taichou Calendar, the Santong Calendar, and the Emperor's Calendar of the Sui Dynasty, and the Daiyan Calendar of the Tang Dynasty. Some calendars, although not officially used, have had a role in health care, medicine, thought and scholarship, astronomy, mathematics, and so on.

The ancients observed the movement of the laws of the heavens, the ancient times have been used in the stem and branch chronology, according to the Ming Dynasty historian Wan Minying according to China's ancient documents explicitly identified the stem and branch of the Emperor's invention, in his book "three life" in the detailed records. The invention of the stem and branch marked the appearance of the most primitive calendar, which was used to calculate years with numbers. After the Xia Dynasty, there was a multi-track calendar system, which meant that each vassal and tribe had their own local calendars. The Qin Dynasty was the last calendar in Chinese history to "set the four times of the year by the leap month". During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the leap month was placed after the ninth month, which was called the "latter ninth month". In the first year of Emperor Wu's reign, the intercalary month was placed in a month that did not contain a mid-month period, as the first month of the intercalary month. At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the Chinese calendar took a major turn for the better, with the calendar being standardized across the country and becoming a more independent science and technology. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty charged Deng Ping, Tang Du, and Lok Ma-tei to create the Han Calendar, which was finalized in the seventh year of Emperor Wu's Yuanfeng reign. In May of that year, he changed the name of the year to Taichu (i.e., the first year of Taichu) and promulgated the implementation of this set of "Han Calendar", which was called "Taichu Calendar" by the later generations, after which Liu Xin made the "Santong Calendar", and the important feature of the two calendars was that the year and age were combined into a single one, and the integer days of a year were 365, no longer 366 as in the previous calendars. The "plus difference method" replaces the previous "minus difference method" to adjust the time difference, the beginning of the year cycle is quite fixed, and the leap month can be determined by mathematical calculation.

The Republic of China (ROC) was founded, adopting the Western calendar and using either the Western calendar or the Republic of China (ROC) calendar, and wanted to abolish the traditional Chinese calendar. When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, it continued to use the Western calendar, with the AD calendar; however, it retained the use of the traditional Chinese calendar, the Summer Calendar, and promulgated the national standard "Compilation and promulgation of the lunar calendar" in 2017 A.D. After 1970, the "Summer Calendar" was renamed the "Summer Calendar". After 1970, the "summer calendar" was renamed the "lunar calendar". The current lunar calendar is calculated by the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is part of the official calendar, the Chinese Astronomical Calendar.