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Note: This is really the Lunar Calandar, used by most Asian countries, Korea, Japan, SE Asia in the past. Many countries don't officially celebrate the New Year now and most use a western (Gregorian) calendar. The Sexagesimal CycleThe Chinese zodiac system is extremely complex, based on an ancient agricultural calendar. In addition to the twelve animals, there are the elements (Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal), hours (12 two hour periods), directions, stones, months and seasons.Chinese do not have a continuous year count. They started counting from one again with each new emperor. However, from the Han dynasty, some scholars tried to reconstruct the ancient Chinese chronology, and it became customary to claim that the calendar was invented by the Yellow Emperor, Huáng Dì (xx), in 2637 BCE during the 61st year of his reign. However, many people prefer to start the count with the first year of his reign in 2697 BCE. To add to the confusion, some authors use an epoch of 2698 BCE. I believe this because they want to use a year 0 as the starting point, rather than counting 2697 BCE as year 1, or that they assume that the Yellow Emperor started his year with the Winter solstice The 12 year cycle begins with the Rat. According to Chinese legend, the twelve animals quarreled one day as to who was to head the cycle of years. The gods were asked to decide and they held a contest: whoever was to reach the opposite bank of the river would be first, and the rest of the animals would receive their years according to their finish. All the twelve animals gathered at the river bank and jumped in. Unknown to the ox, the rat had jumped upon his back. As the ox was about to jump ashore, the rat jumped off the ox's back, and won the race. An important aspect of the Chinese calendar is the sexagenary cycle. This is a combination of the 10 “heavenly stems”, tiān gān (天干), and the 12 “earthly branches”, dì zhī (地支).
To explain how this cycle works, let us denote both the stems and
the branches by their numbers. We denote 1 by (1-1) or (甲, 子), 2 by (2-2) or (乙, 丑) and so on up to (10-10) or
(癸, 酉). But now we have run out of stems, so we denote 11
by (1-11) or (甲, 戌) and 12 by (2-12) or (乙, 亥). Now we have run out of branches, too, so 13 becomes (3-1) or
(丙, 子). We continue in this way through 6 cycles of stems
and 5 cycles of branches up to 60, which is (10, 12) or (癸, 亥). The next number is then (1,1) or (甲, 子), which starts
a new sexagesimal cycle.
Source: The Mathematics of the Chinese Calendar by
Helmer Aslaksen Why is 2000 a “Golden Dragon” Year?This cycle is used for keeping track of years, months, days and (double) hours in Chinese astrology. Your date and time of birth is determined by the Eight Characters (xx) formed by the pair of cyclical characters for the year, month, day and hour. The 60-day cycle has been used for keeping track of days since ancient times. In 4 CE, during the Hàn (?) dynasty, the 60-year cycle was also introduced. The earliest recorded use of the 60-year cycle is from 13 CE. In modern times, the year cycle is the only one that is in common use. Notice that each branch, or animal, occurs five times in each 60-year cycle. An animal corresponding to an odd number, will meet the stems that correspond to the odd numbers. Year 2000 is the 17th year in the current cycle (see below), so it corresponds to (7,5) (17 = 10 + 7 = 12 + 5) or (?, ?). So we see that it is a metal dragon year, or a “Golden Dragon”. This way of naming years within a 60-year cycle goes back approximately 2000 years. A similar naming of days and months has fallen into disuse, but the date name is still listed in calendars. It is customary to number the 60-year cycles since 2637 B.C.E., when the calendar was supposedly invented. In that year the first 60-year cycle started.
Dynasties
XIA DYNASTY (Hsia)
21-16 CENTURY BC
SHANG DYNASTY
16-11 CENTURY BC
ZHOU DYNASTY (Chou)
1111 BC-770 BC
Spring and Autum
770-476
Warring States
476-221
QIN DYNASTY (Chin)
(255-) 221-207 BC
HAN DYNASTY
206 BC-220
Western [Former] Han 206 BC - 24 AD .... Eastern [Later] Han AD 25 - 220
Three Kingdoms 220-280
Shu Han 221 - 263 ..... Wei 220 - 265 .... Wu 222 - 280
JIN DYNASTY (Tsin)
265-420
SOUTHERN/NORTHERN DYNASTIES
420-589
SOUTHERN DYNASTIES: Liu Song 420 - 479 .... Southern Qi 479 - 502 .... Liang 502 - 557
.... Chen 557 ~589
NORTHERN DYNASTIES: Later [Northern] Wei 386 - 534 .... Eastern Wei 534 -550
.... Western Wei 535 - 556 .... Northern Qi 550 - 577 .... Northern Zhou 557 ~581
SUI DYNASTY
581-618
TANG DYNASTY
Li Yuan
618-907
FIVE DYNASTIES and Ten Kingdoms
907-960
Later Liang 907 - 923 .... Later Tang 923 - 936 .... Later Jin 936 - 47
.... Later Han 947 - 950 .... Later Zhou 951 - 960
LIAO DYNASTY
(907-) 947-1125
SONG DYNASTY (Sung)
960-1279
YUAN DYNASTY www.wsu.edu/~dee/CHEMPIRE/YUAN.HTM
Mongol rulers
1279-1368
MING DYNASTY
1368-1644
QING DYNASTY (Ching)
Kang Xi and Qian Long
1644-1911
The Republic of China
Sun Yat-sen
1911-49
The People's Republic of China
Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Mao Zedong
1949-
Source: Chinese History at USCSee Also: Portraits of Emperiors at chinapage.com
The Chinese calendar is not a strictly lunar calendar like the Islamic calendar. It is a lunisolar calendar. The basic unit is the lunar month, with a year being 12 months with leap months thrown in every 2-3 years.
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