When I was in studying Chinese, I came across a whole bunch of arcane, obscure research. Being me, I photocopied or otherwise preserved notes on certain things that interested me.
One of the things that interests me:
Calendars. I like them. The eternal conflict between the solar year and the lunar month, and then trying to work the stars in there, too! Intercalcary days! Intercalcary
weeks! Oh, it's all just too interesting.
While up in the attic the other day, I unearthed some of this buried research. It turns out that in traditional Chinese culture, there are 24 segments to each year -- twice a month, or roughly every two weeks, one segment ends and the other begins. Not having the 7-day week, which is an ancient Hebrew invention, traditional China had the 9-day market cycle, and then also these 24 segments based on the sun's progression. Twelve of them are Principal Terms -- basically months -- and the ones in between those twelve are Sectional Terms.
It interested me to see that May 21 (approximately) will begin the fourth Principal Term (Zhongqi), when the sun's longitude is "60." This Principal Term will last 31.2 days, until the sun is at ecliptic longitude 90 -- the summer solstice, and also (incidentally) my birthday.
And I thought it might interest you, too. So I'm making a new tag for "calendars," and if I remember every two weeks, I'll update you on what Term we're in. Just for your reference.
May 21: Xiaoman : 小 滿 (literal meaning: Lesser Fullness [of grain, i.e. kernels plump up])References:
http://astro.nmsu.edu/~lhuber/leaphist.html, a page all about leap years in various calendrical systems.
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/intro/focus/solar-term.htm includes the 2008 dates for all these terms![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
