Chinese calendar

The lunar calendar

The Chinese calendar as that of many other civilizations is originally a lunar calendar. Ie it takes into account the progress of two major regulators of nature, sun and moon, and is based mainly on rules astronomical: the lunar.

Each month of a lunar year, twelve months long, begins with a new moon and lasts for twenty-nine to thirty days. The months have no particular designation, they are designated numerically according to their order of appearance in time. Some months, however, as they include twenty-nine or thirty days, are called "little month" or "long months".

The twelve lunar months a total of three hundred fifty-four days, with neither eleven days to coincide with the solar year.

The Chinese calendar

The Chinese solution was to insert an extra month every two to three years, which would be announced by the almanac. This month is not inserted at the end of the lunar year, ie it is not a thirteenth month properly appointed. It is interposed between two other months, so there are two sixth month, two thirds or so months. In this way the winter solstice always falls in the eleventh month, the spring equinox in the second, the summer solstice in the fifth and the autumn equinox in the eighth. For astrological considerations, the system can not apply intercalation between the twelfth and first months or in a period during which the sun passes from one zodiac sign to another. It follows a lunar calendar with the first day of the year fluctuates from year to year.

Fixing dates

Before the calendar reform in 104 BC, some dynasties established themselves on the day of New Year as the determination of the calendar has always been a royal prerogative, jealously guarded, which sometimes have political implications. Under the Zhou (1122 BC. AD-256 AD.) It fell to the eleventh month, however, that other vassal states, users of different schedules, have set an entirely different date. Thus when the calendar reform, it was determined that the year begin on the first moon after the sun out of the last three Winter signs, the Capricorn. New Year's Day always falls between twenty-one in January and February this twelfth (according to the solar calendar).

Since that first reform, there was very little change in the calendar, until the Republic of China in 1912 finally adopted the Gregorian calendar. At the same time, it was decided to give the New Year celebration called the "spring", to differentiate the Western New Year with Chinese New Year, since its date of celebration remains the lunar New Year, which opens precisely the spring season