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The Chinese Lunar/Solar CalendarThe traditional Chinese agricultural calendar is primarily lunar, in that the lunar cycle (a lunation) between new moons is a principal part of the calendar. This cycle averages 29.53 days, but can vary by several hours for any given time of the year. A Chinese year normally consists of 12 months where a month corresponds to one lunar cycle. Each month starts on the day of the new moon. Since the cycle is not an even number of days, a month in the lunar calendar can vary between 29 and 30 days and a normal year can be 353, 354, or 355 days. The Chinese agricultural calendar is also partially solar though because 7 times in a 19 year cycle, an extra leap month (runyue) is be added to the year to bring it back into line with the longer solar year. To explain the basis for determining when leap months are added, one must first understand the Chinese system of solar terms. 24 dates, made up of 12 principal terms and 12 sectional terms, divide the solar year into 24 periods that are based on the earth's position around the sun. These include the equinoxes and the solstices. According to the Chinese calendar, the winter solstice must occur in month 11 of the year. A lunar month in which a principal term does not occur becomes a leap (or intercalary) month and is assigned the number of the month that preceded it but is designated as a leap. If this happens to occur twice in one year, only the first month in which it occurs in a leap month. The Chinese new year itself starts on the second new moon after the winter solstice. Chinese years, months, and days are also assigned a name based upon the Chinese system of the heavenly stems and earthly branches. In this cyclical system, each year, month, and day is associated with one of the 10 heavenly stems and 12 earthly branches. Each successive time period will have a new stem and branch, until going through the stems 6 times and the branches 5 times, to give 60 unique combinations. In the case of years and dates, this gives a continuous cycle for thousands of years. This is similar for months, but in the case of a leap month, it is assigned its previous month's branch/stem combination with the leap designation added. This is why the combination is so easily calculated for years and days, but requires tables or complicated astronomical calculations to find months. |