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| Chinese calendar | |||||||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 農曆 | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 农历 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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| Part of a series on the |
| History of science and technology in China |
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The traditional Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar dating from the Han dynasty that combines solar, lunar, and other cycles for various social and agricultural purposes. While the Gregorian calendar has been adopted and adapted in various ways, and is generally the basis for China's standard civic purposes, aspects of the traditional lunisolar calendar remain, including the association of the twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac in relation to months and years.
The traditional calendar used the sexagenary cycle-based ganzhi system's mathematically repeating cycles of Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches. Together with astronomical, horological, and phenologic observations, definitions, measurements, and predictions of years, months, and days were refined to an accurate standard. Astronomical phenomena and calculations emphasized especially the efforts to mathematically correlate the solar and lunar cycles from the perspective of the earth, which, however, are known to require some degree of numeric approximation or compromises. The general use of the Gregorian calendar includes the observing traditional lunisolar holidays. There are many types and subtypes of the Chinese calendar, partly reflecting developments in astronomical observation and horology, with over a millennium's worth of history. The major modern form is the Gregorian calendar-based official version of Mainland China, though diaspora versions are also notable in other regions of China and Chinese-influenced cultures.
The logic of the various permutations of the Chinese calendar has been based on considerations such as the technical form from mathematics and astronomy, the philosophical considerations, and the political, and the resulting disparities between different calendars is significantly notable. Various similar calendar systems are also known from various regions or ethnic groups of Central Asia, South Asia, and other ethnic regions. Indeed, the Chinese calendar has influenced and been influenced by most parts of the world these days. One particularly popular feature is the Chinese zodiac. The Chinese calendar and horology includes many multifaceted methods of computing years, eras, months, days and hours (with modern horology even splitting the seconds into very tiny sub-units using atomic methods).
Epochs are one of the important features of calendar systems. An epoch is a particular point in time at which a calendar system may use as its initial time reference, allowing for the consecutive numbering of years from a chosen starting year, date, or time. In the Chinese calendar system, examples include the inauguration of Huangdi or the birth of Confucius. Also, many dynasties had their own dating systems, which could include regnal eras based on the inauguration of a dynasty, the enthronement of a particular monarch, or eras arbitrarily designated due to political or other considerations, such as a desire for a change of luck. Era names are useful for determining dates on artifacts such as ceramics, which were often traditionally dated by an era name during the production process.
Historical variations of the lunisolar calendar are features of the Chinese calendar system. The topic of the Chinese calendar includes various traditional types of the Chinese calendar. As is generally the case with calendar systems, the Chinese calendars tend to focus on basic calendar functions, such as the identification of years, months, and days according to astronomical phenomena and calculations, with a special effort to correlate the solar and lunar cycles experienced on earth—an effort which is known to mathematically require some degree of approximation. One of the major features of some traditional calendar systems in China (and elsewhere) has been the idea of the sexagenary cycle. The Chinese lunisolar calendar has had several significant variations over the course of time and history. Many historical variations in the Chinese calendar are associated with political changes, such as dynastic succession. Solar and agricultural calendars have a long history in China. Purely lunar calendar systems were known in China; however, purely lunar calendars tended to be of limited utility, and were not widely accepted by farmers, who for agricultural purposes needed to focus on predictability of seasons for planting and harvesting purposes, and thus required a calendar useful for agricultural. For farming purposes and keeping track of the seasons Chinese solar or lunisolar calendars were particularly useful. Thus, over time, the publication of multipurpose and agricultural almanacs has become a longstanding tradition in China
Various other astronomical phenomena have been incorporated into calendars besides the cycles of the sun and the moon, for example, the planets and the constellations (or mansions) of asterisms along the ecliptic.
Many Chinese holidays and other areas both in ancient and modern times have been determined by the traditional lunisolar calendar or considerations based upon the lunisolar calendar; and, which now are generally combined with more modern calendar considerations. The traditions of the lunisolar calendar remain very popular and the Gregorian calendar has been used as the standard basis for civic calendars.