Seeing that the New Year is coming, I turned over the calendar, which showed both the solar calendar and the lunar calendar. Thinking of my usual chat, I found that many people were confused about the lunar calendar and the solar calendar. After thinking about it carefully, I found that China’s calendar method is not only the lunar calendar but also the solar calendar. It’s really exciting to talk about it. In addition to the lunar calendar and the solar calendar, leap months and leap years, there are other twenty-four solar terms and other heavenly stems and earthly branches, which make people confused.
To understand, let’s look at the calendar.
The year 2018 is about to pass. This year 2018 is the world's common AD calendar, which is what we often call the "Gregorian calendar". Starting from the first year of the Christian era, it is now 2018, and the year that is about to begin is 2019. This chronological method seems to have quite large numbers and a sense of age.
2018 is the Year of the Dog. The two words "Wuxu" are printed on the calendar, which refers to the Year of 1898. These two words should be familiar to everyone. If you have studied modern history in middle school, the Reform Movement of 1898 is 120 What happened in the Year of the Dog years ago. This method of chronology is often referred to as the "Stems and Branches chronology method."
The chronological system of stems and branches is to use "A", "B", "C", "D", "W", "Ji", "Geng", "Xin", "Ren" and "Gui" "Ten stems and branches, combined with "Zi", "Chou", "Yin", "Mao", "Chen", "Si", "Wu", "Wei", "Shen", "You", "Xu", The twelve earthly branches of "Hai" combine in pairs to form sixty different stems and branches. One stem and branch corresponds to one year, and the cycle repeats every sixty years. This is what we often call the "Sixty Years". The "Revolution of 1911", the "Sino-Japanese War of 1891" and the "Gengzi Indemnity" in history were all recorded in this way. Because the earthly branches match the twelve zodiac signs, 2018 is the Year of the Dog. Children born in this year are all born in the year of Wuxu. 2019 is the Year of the Pig, Jihai, in descending order.
This way of counting has its own characteristics. Take the zodiac signs as an example. For the same zodiac sign, the earthly branches are the same, but the heavenly stems are different. Take people who were born in the year of Dog as an example. Dog people whose stems and branches are in the years of Jiaxu, Bingxu, Wuxu, Gengxu, and Renxu respectively. Dog people with the same stems and branches are either of the same age or sixty years apart.
The stem and branch dating method is relatively rarely used now, but the stem and branch dating can be detailed to the month, day, and hour. This is what we often call the birth date. The heavenly stems and earthly branches correspond to the year, month, day and hour. The eight characters are accurate to the time period when each person was born. From the perspective of positioning one's birth date, the chronology of the stems and branches will definitely continue.
The Spring Festival is just around the corner. The Spring Festival is the Lunar New Year. The new year begins on the first day of the first lunar month. What’s going on with the lunar calendar?
In terms of calendar classification standards, the lunar calendar corresponds to the solar calendar, plus the lunisolar calendar, there are three calendars. The "Gregorian calendar" popular in the world is actually a solar calendar, while the "lunar calendar" of the traditional Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar.
The Gregorian calendar is a calendar based on the movement cycle of the earth revolving around the sun. The calendar year is approximately equal to the tropical year, and there are 12 months in a year. This "month" actually has nothing to do with the moon. The month and date are both related to The sun's position on the ecliptic coincides. The twenty-four solar terms are also divided according to the ecliptic plane. The twenty-four solar terms are used to divide the twelve months. Each month contains two solar terms and there is no leap month. Therefore, the twenty-four solar terms correspond to the Gregorian calendar. There is a sentence in the song of the twenty-four solar terms: "The first half of the year falls on the 6th and the 21st, and the second half of the year falls on the 8th and the 23rd." This refers to the dates corresponding to the Gregorian calendar time.
The lunar calendar, also known as the lunar calendar, is based on the law of the moon's rotation around the earth. One month is the moon's orbit around the earth, that is, the lunar phase change of the synodic month is used as the basis for determining the calendar month. A calendar year with twelve calendar months. One month in the lunar calendar is called the "Syrochronic Moon". The first day of every lunar month is the lunar day, and the fifteenth day of the lunar month is the lunar day. Regarding the waxing and waning of the moon at different times such as the first and fifteenth day of the lunar month, we only care about the lunar month, regardless of the tropical year, and it has nothing to do with the four seasons of the year.
The lunar calendar is a combined lunar and lunar calendar, based on the lunar calendar and incorporating the twenty-four solar terms as a supplementary calendar. Taking the change cycle of the moon phase, that is, the synodic month as the length of the month, and referring to the solar tropical year as the length of the year, leap months are set to make the average calendar year compatible with the tropical year. Therefore, our country's traditional calendar should not be called a lunar calendar in a strict sense, but a lunisolar calendar.
To this day, almost all Chinese people in the world, as well as countries such as the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam, still use the lunar calendar to calculate traditional festivals, such as the Spring Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and other festivals. Since the twenty-four solar terms are closely related to the farming season, rural areas still retain traditional festival forms such as Qingming Festival sacrifices, whipping cattle at the beginning of spring, and winter solstice dumplings.
To put it simply, the Gregorian calendar is the solar calendar, which is the world’s universal calendar for the AD; although the lunar calendar is also called the lunar calendar, it is actually a combined lunar and yang calendar. of the Gregorian calendar. There are also the stem and branch calendars related to the lunar calendar, which are the calendars that China retains today and are also the traditional culture that has been embedded in the lives of ordinary people.