Chinese Calendar of Chinese Traditional Calendar

China was one of the first countries in the world to invent the calendar, and its emergence had a profound impact on the country's economic and cultural development.

The Han calendar, the traditional calendar of the Han people, one of the traditional Chinese calendars, is also known as the lunar calendar, the lunar calendar, the ancient calendar, the yellow calendar, the summer calendar, and the old calendar. The Chinese calendar belongs to the yin-yang calendar. On the one hand, it takes the moon's orbit around the earth as one month, and the average length of the month is equal to the lunar month, which is the same as the principle of the lunisolar calendar, so it is also called the lunisolar calendar; on the other hand, it sets up intercalary months in order to make the average length of each year as close as possible to the regression year, and at the same time it sets up the twenty-four festivals in order to reflect the characteristics of the seasonal changes, so the Han Chinese calendar combines the characteristics of the yin and yang calendars, which is also known as the lunar calendar. To this day, almost all Chinese people around the world, as well as countries such as the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam, still use the Han calendar to project traditional festivals such as the Chinese New Year, the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival and other festivals.

Introduction

The Chinese calendar, used in Han areas, was called the summer or old calendar after the Republic of China switched to the Western calendar in the Xinhai year, and was renamed the lunar calendar during the Cultural Revolution, which is a yin and yang calendar, with the phases of the moon determining the months, and the sun determining the annual cycle. The beginning of each month is the first day of the lunar month when the sun and the moon rise at the same time and the moon cannot be seen on Earth, and the length of each month may be 30 or 29 days depending on the phase of the moon, with 12 months as a year. The solar year is divided into 24 seasons, with the 1st, 3rd, ......23 and other odd numbers being the seasons, and the 2nd, 4th, ......24 being the qi, or middle qi. Because the solar year cycle and the 12 months with the moon phase as the cycle does not coincide, about every four years to increase one month, increased to no mid-qi behind the month, such as February 2004 only a festival hibernation, no qi, will be added to the intercalary month to February after the leap month for intercalary 2 months. The location of the leap month is not quite the same every year.

The Han calendar (lunar calendar) is generally 12 months a year, the number of days in a month in accordance with the moon's orbit around the Earth cycle, 29 or 30 days, leap year for 13 months, the Chinese lunar year for 353 or 354 days in the year of peace, leap year for 384 or 385 days, the average is about 365.2422 days per year (i.e., the Earth's one week around the sun time).

The Chinese (lunar) calendar can be deduced as follows: the day when the moon orbits in a straight line between the earth and the sun is the beginning of each month, called the first day of the month (solstice). The longest day of the year is the summer solstice, and the shortest day is the winter solstice, based on which the year is divided into 24 equal parts to obtain the 24 solar terms. Usually, the month in which the nearest Solstice (Spring Festival) falls is the first month. The Spring Festival falls between January 20 and February 20 on the Gregorian calendar.

From ancient times, each dynasty to set up the first month, with the historical record of the Xia Dynasty, the winter solstice month after the second month of the c month for the first month, according to the dry branch of the lunar calendar is the winter solstice month for the first month, i.e., the son of the month; the Shang Dynasty to change the first month, pushed back in January, the Zhou Dynasty and changed the first month, and then pushed back in January. In the Han Dynasty, the first month of the year was Jianyin, and in the following dynasties, the first month of the year was Jianyin, and the first month of the year was always the winter solstice, even though the first month of the year was still established.

Each emperor on the throne, to change the chronology of the year, and sometimes the rise of any time to change the chronology, but from the Ming Dynasty onwards, the emperor no longer change the chronology of the year on the throne, but new emperors still have to change the reign, the defects of this chronology is that the last year of the last emperor and the next emperor's first year of the year coincides with the first year of the first year of the emperor, such as 14 years of the Tongzhi is the first year of the first year of the Guangxu, because the year is the death of the last emperor, the next emperor to take the throne in the same The year is the same year that the previous emperor died and the next emperor took the throne. However, the stem and branch chronology has always maintained, in addition to the Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, no emperor reigned for more than 60 years, so as long as you say that a certain emperor year and the stem and branch, the age is quite clear, such as Guangxu yihai is Tongzhi 14 or Guangxu yuan year or 1875, Tongzhi reign did not have yihai year.

Other ethnic groups in China have their own festivals, such as April 8 for the Miao, March 3 for the Zhuang, and March Street for the Bai, all of which are based on the Chinese Han (lunar) calendar. Traditional Han Chinese festivals such as New Year (Spring Festival), Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Yuan Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, etc. are based on the Chinese Calendar (Lunar Calendar ).