"Sixty Years", also known as "Sixty Flower Years", was used in ancient my country to record years, months, days and times. "Sixty Jiazi" is a cyclic combination of "Ten Heavenly Stems" and "Twelve Earthly Branches", namely: "Jiazi, Yichou, Bingyin, Dingmao, Wuchen...", to "Guihai" " ends, and then starts from "Jiazi", and the cycle repeats. The sequence is detailed in the figure below:
1. Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches
The basis of "Sixty Years" is "Heavenly Stems" And "Earthly Branches", "Heavenly Stems" and "Earthly Branches" are all ancient Chinese written sequence symbols. "Heavenly Stems" include "A, B, B, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui"; "Earthly Branches" "Including "Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, Hai".
2. Stem and branch chronology
In the stem and branch chronology, each stem and branch represents one year, sixty years is a cycle, and the starting stem and branch is "Jiazi", so it is called "Jiazi". "Sixty Years of Flowers"; and because the names of the stems and branches are intricately intertwined, it is also called "Sixty Years of Flowers". Therefore, later generations used to call the sixty-year-old "Sixty Years Old" and the elderly over sixty years old as "Sixtieth Old Man".
"Sixty-year-old" can be used to mark the year, and when used to mark the year, sixty years is a cycle. As shown in the figure below, the last "Jiazi" year in the past was 1984. The stems and branches of that year can be calculated based on the "Jiazi" year in 1984. For example, 2017 is the "Dingyou" year.