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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese calendar | 1/8 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_calendar | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T14:20:08.278657+00:00 | kb-cron |
The Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar created by or commonly used by the Chinese people. A total of 102 calendars have been officially recorded in classical historical texts. In addition, many more calendars were created privately, with others being built by people who adapted Chinese cultural practices, such as the Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, and many others, over the course of a long history. A Chinese calendar consists of twelve months, each aligned with the phases of the moon, along with an extra intercalary month inserted as needed to keep the calendar in sync with the seasons. It also features twenty-four solar terms, which track the position of the sun and are closely related to climate patterns. Among these, the winter solstice is the most significant reference point and must occur in the eleventh month of the year. Each month contains either twenty-nine or thirty days. The sexagenary cycle for each day runs continuously over thousands of years and serves as a determining factor to pinpoint a specific day amidst the many variations in the calendar. The variety of calendars arises from deviations in algorithms and assumptions about inputs. The Chinese calendar is location-sensitive, meaning that calculations based on different locations, such as Beijing and Nanjing, can yield different results. While modern China primarily adopts the Gregorian calendar for official purposes, the traditional calendar remains culturally significant, influencing festivals and cultural practices, determining the timing of Chinese New Year with traditions like the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac still widely observed. The winter solstice serves as another New Year, a tradition inherited from ancient China. Beyond China, it has shaped other East Asian calendars, including the Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese lunisolar systems, each adapting the same lunisolar principles while integrating local customs and terminology.
== Etymology ==
The name of calendar is in Chinese: 曆; pinyin: lì, and was represented in earlier character forms variants (歷, 厤), and ultimately derived from an ancient form (秝). The ancient form of the character consists of two stalks of rice plant (禾), arranged in parallel. This character represents the order in space and also the order in time. As its meaning became complex, the modern dedicated character (曆) was created to represent the meaning of calendar. There are various Chinese terms for the calendar including:
Nongli Calendar (traditional Chinese: 農曆; simplified Chinese: 农历; pinyin: nónglì; lit. 'agricultural calendar') Laoli Calendar (traditional Chinese: 老曆; simplified Chinese: 老历; pinyin: lǎolì; lit. 'old calendar') Zhongli Calendar (traditional Chinese: 中曆; simplified Chinese: 中历; pinyin: zhōnglì; Jyutping: zung1 lik6; lit. 'Chinese calendar') Huali Calendar (traditional Chinese: 華曆; simplified Chinese: 华历; pinyin: huálì; Jyutping: waa4 lik6; lit. 'Chinese calendar')
Various modern Chinese calendar names resulted from the struggle between the introduction of Gregorian calendar by government and the preservation of customs by the public in the era of Republic of China. The government wanted to abolish the Chinese calendar and use the Gregorian calendar, and even abolished the Chinese New Year, but faced great opposition. The public needed the astronomical Chinese calendar to do things at a proper time, for example farming and fishing; also, a wide spectrum of festivals and customs observations have been based on the calendar. The government finally compromised and rebranded it as the agricultural calendar in 1947, depreciating the calendar to merely agricultural use.
== Year-numbering systems ==
=== Eras ===
Ancient China numbered years from an emperor's ascension to the throne or his declaration of a new era name. The first recorded reign title was Jiànyuán (建元), from 140 BCE; the last reign title was Xuāntǒng (宣統; 宣统), from 1908 CE. The era system was abolished in 1912, after which the current or Republican era was used.
=== Epochs ===
An epoch is a point in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era, thus serving as a reference point from which subsequent time or dates are measured. The use of epochs in Chinese calendar system allow for a chronological starting point from whence to begin point continuously numbering subsequent dates. Various epochs have been used. Similarly, nomenclature similar to that of the Christian era has occasionally been used: