There are 12.37 lunar orbits in a year and coping with this awkward number was a real problem for human civilizations. Most regrettably the date calculated by the sun is out of step to that by the moon. The word ‘calendar’ comes from the Latin kalendae ➚ ‘to announce’ referring to the Roman custom of announcing the official new moon that started the month everyone then started counting the days within the new month. Note the prominent round Moon Gate.ĭragons chasing a ball representing the moon.
People can then easily count through the days within the month up to 29, so as long as it is agreed when is the day of the new moon, you can agree dates and make arrangements for meetings on particular future days based on this lunar calendar. It is best to work with the new moon as the starting day of the month, as it is easy to see when the disc is entirely dark without even a slither of light at its edge. By carefully tracking the phase of the moon you can work out the day within a month.
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The moon takes 29.53 days to go around the earth and just as importantly the phase of the moon changes through this period from full to half to new to half and back to full again. The moon has been the most useful clock for thousands of years.
The motion of the Moon Moon 月 yuè or 太 阴 tài yīn As summer progresses different stars and constellations appear above the southern horizon ➚ and this is another way of working out the date. The Chinese used the pole star and circumpolar stars rather than the sun as these are easier to observe directly and accurately. The stars appear to rotate about one point in the night star - the pole star. As the sun is so bright, this observation has to be made just before sunrise or after sunset. The sun appears to move relative to the backdrop of stars in an annual cycle - and so the constellation the sun is currently in front of tells you the approximate date. Perhaps more useful than using the sun as a clock is to take a look up at the stars.
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Image by Mysid ➚ available under a Creative Commons License ➚ The Stars The twenty-eight mansions of the Chinese astronomy. The Orthodox Eastern Church ➚ has still not accepted the Gregorian system and that is why they celebrate Easter ➚ on a much later date. There were mass protests when these days were wiped from existence. By the time the Gregorian system was introduced in 1582, the old Julian calculation had drifted from the true solar time by ten days or more. However, the number of days is actually a little less than 365.25 it is closer to 365.2425, to account for this discrepancy the Gregorian calendar ➚ was introduced with additional rules for leap days in century years (2100 will not be a leap year but 2000 was). In the western Julian Calendar ➚ an extra leap day needs to be inserted into the calendar every four years (4 x 0.25 = 1) to keep the solar calendar synchronized with the earth’s orbit. Mass media has reduced popularity of most forms but devoted practitioners are helping to keep the art-forms alive. Many of these have roots back in ancient times - over a thousand years. Traditional performanceChina has a great range of traditional performing arts: theater, opera, dance, shadow and glove puppetry and story-telling. Using the gnomon allows the solstices to be found based on the longest and shortest shadows. The earliest astronomical instrument is just a stick in the ground - a gnomon ➚ to measure the sun's shadow - from which the sundial is a direct descendent. Alternatively if you have some sort of clock you can measure when the length of a day is equal to the length of a night, and so identify the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes ➚. It is at its highest at the Summer Solstice ➚ on 21st/22nd June and lowest on the Winter Solstice 21st/22nd December. To work out the day within the year you can measure the angle of the sun at midday, but this assumes you have an accurate idea of time. This number is rather inconvenient as it can not be divided up into a whole number of days. The earth goes around the sun once every 365.2425 days. The motion of the Sun Sunset at the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, Xi'an Sun 日 rì or 太 阳 tài yang So from the earliest times it has been essential to correctly track the passage of the year by using a calendar. Many activities are keyed to the calendar: when seeds must be planted grain harvested fruit gathered and sheep moved to upland. It has always been vital to know the accurate date in the year so everything is done at the appropriate time. In this calendar section we have a display of the Chinese calendar for the whole current month showing all festivals as well as a whole year calendar for 20.
This page describes how the Chinese lunar calendar system works.
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