The Chinese Zodiac
By
Gray Kelso
This time of year it's amazing the amount of calendars you can find on the shelves and online. There's everything from religious, to cultural, to zodiac, to lunar, to cheesecake calendars, and it's amazing we can even keep up with all of them. Well SUITE is here to help with some of them.
The calendars in widespread use today include the Gregorian calendar, which is the de facto international standard, and is used almost everywhere in the world for civil purposes, including in China and India (along with the Indian national calendar). The Hebrew calendar is the official calendar of Israel's government, but the Gregorian calendar is much more widely used in Israel's business and day-to-day affairs. The Persian calendar is used in Iran and Afghanistan. The Islamic calendar is used by Muslims the world over. The Chinese, Hebrew, Hindu, and Julian calendars are widely used for religious and/or social purposes.
For this article we're going to concentrate on the Chinese calendar since it seems to be prevalant everywhere, and is the most fun to try and deciper. You can't go into any oriental dining place and not see this calendar, in placemat form, without gazing down on it and trying to decide if you're compatible with the person sitting across from you or finding out which sign you fall under!
The Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar (synchronized both to the motion of the Moon and to the apparent motion of the Sun), incorporating elements of a lunar calendar (synchronized to the motion of the Moon) with those of a solar calendar (based on perceived seasonal changes synchronized to the apparent motion of the Sun). In China today, the Gregorian Calendar is used for most day to day activities, but the Chinese calendar is still used for marking traditional holidays such as Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) and the Mid-Autumn Festival, and in astrology, such as choosing the most auspicious date for a wedding or the opening of a building.
Because each month follows one cycle of the moon, it is also used to determine the phases of the moon. Other traditional East Asian calendars are similar to if not identical to the Chinese calendar: the Korean calendar is identical; the Vietnamese calendar substitutes the cat for the rabbit in the Chinese zodiac; the Tibetan calendar differs slightly in animal names, and the traditional Japanese calendar uses a different method of calculation, resulting in disagreements between the calendars in some years.
In China, the traditional calendar is known as the "farmer's calendar", while the Gregorian calendar is known as the "standard calendar", or "Western calendar". The Chinese calendar was also called the "old calendar" after the "new calendar", i.e. the Gregorian calendar, was adopted as the official calendar.
The earliest archaeological evidence of the Chinese calendar appears on oracle bones of the late second millennium BCE Shang dynasty. They show a 12-month lunisolar year having an occasional thirteenth month, and even a fourteenth month. Adding extra months to a calendar year is known as intercalation, and serves to adjust for inaccuracies in the calendar, just as the Gregorian calendar puts an extra day in February every four years.
In the Chinese calendar there are twelve animals representing the twelve Earthly Branches and they are, in order, the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep (or goat), monkey, rooster (chicken or cock), dog, and pig (or boar).
Legend explains the sequence in which the animals were assigned. Supposedly, thirteen animals fought over the precedence of the animals in the cycle of years in the calendar, so the Chinese gods held a contest to determine the order. All the animals lined more >>
