Coined Chinese characters: The 24 solar terms, part 3
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The chapter on "Calendar and Chronology" in Brill's Encyclopedia of China Online (2009) was authored by Ho Peng Yoke (1926-2014), who was the Director of the Needham Research Institute from 1990-2001. The first two paragraphs of Ho's chapter begin as follows:
The traditional Chinese calendar is lunisolar, i. e. it is based on both the movement of the moon and on what seems to be the orbit of the sun around the earth. The incommensurability of the lunar synodical period of 29.530587… days and the equinoctial year's 365.2421… days has always been the cause for numerous difficulties with respect to the establishment of a calendar in China. In order to replace the former calendars which after a time had lost their validity, roughly 100 different types of calendars were devised over a period of about 2000 years, many of which were never officially adopted. According to Joseph Needham, the history of calendar making is the consequence of attempts to "make the incompatible compatible."
It is generally assumed that a simplified moon calendar was already in use in China before the 16th century BCE, even though this has not been proven yet. The earliest evidence for the use of a lunisolar calendar can be found on the oracle bones: those fragments from mammal blade bones or tortoise shells which the rulers of the Shang Empire (16th century BCE to approximately 1045 BCE) used in divination rituals and which were unearthed in Anyang at the end of the 19th century. The Shang people divided the normal year into 12 months, some of them with 30, others with 29 days. At certain intervals they would add an intercalary month in order to align the lunar year with the solar year. At first, this intercalary month was simply added at the end of the year, later it was added to other months according
to certain, fixed rules.
On p. 4, Ho states:
In 1912, the lunisolar calendar was officially abolished in China: with the foundation of the Republic, the Gregorian calendar took its place. The last traditional calendar system in China was the Shixian li, which had been calculated with the aid of the Jesuit Johann Adam Schall and announced in 1645. It was revised under the name of Guimao li by Ignatius Kögler in 1723, who two years later became China's imperial astronomer. Although the traditional Chinese calendar has officially been abolished for almost a century, it is still popular with Chinese around the world, and the traditional Chinese New Year is still celebrated in China and Taiwan as the Spring Festival (festivals). The calendar is traditionally known as the peasant calendar (nongli) in order to distinguish it from the offcial calendar.
Ho makes some important points about revisions and simultaneous existence of various versions of the traditional calendar.
This is the penultimate post on "Coined Chinese characters: The 24 solar terms".
Selected readings
wgj said,
August 7, 2025 @ 10:56 am
Saying that the lunisolar calendar was officially abolished in 1912 and that the "last traditional calendar system WAS" (past tense) the Shixian Li, is misleading or simply wrong. Because in 1949, the First Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) that decided to form the People's Republic of China (PRC) also decided various official matters of this new state, including that it should use the Gregorian calendar as it's official calendar, AND maintain the classic Chinese calendar at the same time.
As a result of that, in the same year, the Purple-Gold-Mountain Observatory published the Standard Document for the New Agrarian Calendar of the People's Republic of China for the Year 1950 (1950年中華人民共和國新農曆通書) as an official document of the PRC government, and has since published the Astronomical Calendar of China (中国天文年历) annually to this date.
In 2017, the "Agrarian Calendar" was further formalize through the national standard GB/T 33661-2017 Calculation and Promulgation of the Chinese Calendar (农历的编算和颁行, English title is from the original document):
https://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=E107EA4DE9725EDF819F33C60A44B296
So no, the classic Chinese calendar hasn't been abolished for good – it's very much part of the matter of state in the PRC.
Jonathan Smith said,
August 7, 2025 @ 10:21 pm
Basic info on the lunisolar calendar is readily accessible. But since these posts are titled '… the 24 solar terms…', a good topic for the ultimate entry in this series — or an additional one — would be the (history of the) Chinese solar-term-based solar calendar(s) mentioned in previous posts. There are plenty of (sometimes very mysterious) reflections of such systems in early texts, for instance, as well as modern curiosities…
E.g. re: wgj's post in the previous thread, I realized IDK to what extent folk astrology based on 八字 tends to reference the technical divisions as opposed to commonsensical ones. E.g., analogous to the solar-term restart of the 12-"month" cycle mentioned by wgj is the 11PM restart of the 12-時辰 cycle… so do people born early in 子時 generally account for this fact in considering their astrological "day" of birth? Since it seems sometimes people don't even know their exact time of birth and assume the first 75% of a horoscope is correct, I am guessing often not…
Also relevant are winter solstice celebrations, so distinctive in e.g. eastern and southern Fujian province and Taiwan.
wgj said,
August 7, 2025 @ 10:31 pm
Recording the time of birth was an important task of the midwife, which was used extensively throughout all social classes. So I assume that they had certain professional methods of telling time – at least to the satisfaction of their clients.