Talk:Chinese calendar

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 * Five Phases and Four Seasons Calendar.png

Names of ten-days in week
The article references that during the Han dynasty there was a 10-day week with washings every fifth day. Where are the names of these 10 days? What is the order of the week. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.134.9.163 (talk) 16:28, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Chagansa Day

 * Mongolia uses the Tibetan New Year as "Chagansa day". On Kublai Khan's imperial advisor, the fifth generation of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism, Phags-pa. It means "holy one" in Tibetan. He issued the Sagar almanac. It has become a chronological system combining Mongolian and Chinese calendars. The "Chagansa Day" in Mongolia is the Tibetan New Year based on the Sakya almanac. This is combined with the Chinese Lunar New Year. It happened in the thirteenth century. Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty in China. For the sake of ruling the Han people. The Mongolian New Year "Chagansa day" and the Chinese Lunar New Year together.

I just undid this addition to the lede. Can someone who understands it condense it to a less choppy sentence or two? —Tamfang (talk) 20:04, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Probably this is about Tsagaan Sar. Double sharp (talk) 21:22, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Chinese calendar is lunisolar not lunar
Correct all instances of "lunar" to "lunisolar" Kylinki (talk) 17:06, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Moving editorial suggestion
Dcattell (talk) 00:34, 24 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Here are some links regarding topics I think are being suggested here.
 * Resources summary page for Purple Mountain Observatory: http://www.pmo.cas.cn/kycg2019/gk2019/
 * Publications for Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Physics: https://www.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/publication/journal_c.php Remsense  聊  01:31, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Article structure
Before getting too much into specifics, the better part of wisdom seems to suggest an attempt to try to improve the organization of this article, and perhaps to better define the focus of the article -- which frankly appears a bit all over the place. I think one of the challenges here is balancing the technical and mathematical details (which are indeed of encyclopedic interest) along with an discussion which is more useful to encyclopedia users who are less specialized in their interests. Also, looking through the past discussion on this page, obviously people have put a lot of passionate work into developing it, which is good; however reading it makes me feel as though I want a bit more of an explicit definition of the scope of the article. Dcattell (talk) 22:26, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I feel like this is an issue with China-related articles at large, where a very long, literature-infused historical through-line has been isolated and has to be bent to fit within one article sometimes, in a way that wouldn't occur with, say, 'Classical calendar', or what have you. That said, I am not sure the best way of going about fixing it, but I think the best solution is probably several articles more focused in scope. Remsense  聊  01:31, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I have one main question regarding this article: what is this article about? The title of the article is "Chinese calendar". The article itself says that it is about the traditional Chinese calendar or else the lunisolar calendar. What is the traditional Chinese calendar? Full disclosure: I am ignorant and confused. True, a good solution would seem to involve several articles more focused in scope. Complicating this is that there are already various articles regarding traditional Chinese calendars. Chinese zodiac, Lunisolar calendar, and Chinese New Year, just to pick a few more-or-less at random. Our "Chinese calendar" article seems to claim a major contradiction: is the article about a Chinese lunisolar calendar in general, or is the article about traditional Chinese calendars as mentioned --- lunisolar, solar, lunar, the sexagenary cycle, and composites with planets and ecliptic mansions? Intuitively, I feel that the article should focus on relatively brief mentions by section of the more important Chinese calendar topics. This would make sense for a "Chinese calendar" article. Major topics would lead to other articles, such as those exemplified above or popular Chinese almanacs (see Tung Shing) and perhaps "Chinese agricultural calendar". Structural architecture is important for any encyclopedia, and Wikipedia in particular. In regards to the similarly broad topic of Chinese poetry it seems to have worked to organize by dynasty (with some exceptions such as Jian'an and Ming-Qing Transition), partly because the poetic record does reflect actual historical context and also because Chinese source material tends to be similarly organized. Calendars of different dynastic periods (plus the modern political entities) would seem to to be to the point, especially since at least the beginning of Zhou calendar reforms seem to have been viewed as important to establishing claims to have the mandate of heaven.


 * Originally, I was only thinking about adding some material partly based on "Computation of the Ancient Six Calendars", which is partly based on the work of Zhāng Péiyú of Purple Mountain Observatory, when from what I remember was before all the exciting new stuff about outer space and associated subatomic particles started becoming such a big thing. Dcattell (talk) 05:46, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Dcattell, it's a case for if I've seen one. I'm starting to think about moving it to Chinese lunisolar calendars, splitting Chinese solar calendars into their own article, and also Modern Chinese horology to boot. In fact, I'll be bold and suggest the split myself.  Remsense  聊  05:56, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

26 November 2023: Splitting proposal
I think this article has at least three focused articles in it: The final article might seem a bit narrow, but I think it's self sustaining. Remsense 聊  06:03, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Chinese lunisolar calendars
 * Chinese solar calendars, and
 * Modern Chinese horology.


 * @ Remsense  聊 : I say go! You,   Remsense  聊, seem to have the energy, willingness, and necessary skill to do this. Wikipedia tends to stagnate unless editors actually do stuff, such as writing and performing organizational tasks such as splitting. However, in this case, what you want to do were well to be done. My thought is not at all to "split" the "Chinese calendar" article. Retain and improve the article by creating the new articles which you propose. Then we will have a "slim" version of the article, which will indeed be an improvement. My suggestion is to map each new article you create to a specific section in the "Chinese calendar" article. which will then be improved by being more general and with less specific detail. Therefor, our readers (such as myself) can get a fair overview of the subject, but without too much mathematics or discussion. These are better saved for the articles which you propose, and indeed much work by many editors has gone into explicating these mathematics and explanations, and by relocating such text the combined work of current and former editors would be well preserved. Be bold. I have been able to sometimes do major improvements to Wikipedia, and sometimes been stymied by nitpickers in fairly minor cases. One never knows whether one's edits might draw some kind of objection. However, in this case, I think that you are just creating some new articles, which will be a good asset to Wikipedia, and then we can improve "Chinese calendar" by focusing the scope of the article to what is most generally important, which will also reduce the "Chinese calendar article to a more user friendly state. The "Chinese calendar" article itself does not need to state that "Taichu Calendar  defined a solar year as $365 385/1539$ days, and the lunar month had $29 43/81$ days.

Since $$\left(365+\frac{385}{1539}\right)\times19=\left(29+\frac{43}{81}\right)\times \left(19\times 12 + 7 \right) $$".
 * The statement does have true encyclopedic value; however, this is best located not in "Chinese calendar", but rather in subsidiary articles such as you propose (and which I hope that you follow through with). I look at it as a hierarchy, with top level articles, medium level articles, and then miscellaneous articles of detail. I believe that there is already a Wikipedia consensus in place for what you want to do, and so I recommend just doing it. If you are worried about naysayers, why not seek them after the fact, rather than before? We are trying to develop an encyclopedia here, not some sort of groupthink about the process. So create your articles. I can slim down "Chinese calendar" on the basis that the information is contained in subsidiary articles. Please, write your proposed articles! Cheers, Dcattell (talk) 07:36, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I figure it's good to get some eyes on it that may have normally passed over this article for years, esp from those who know more about both horology and ancient Chinese cultural institutions such as these, because I am certainly intimidated by the proposal. I think a "disambiguation-plus" setup like you describe would be a very good balance, with this page talking about the calendars used in China at the highest level, with the other pages having the space to go through the evolution of each calendar type. Remsense  聊  17:58, 26 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I am thinking that actually a better title for this article would be Chinese calendar and horology. Maybe I'll move it and see if anyone objects. Anyway I worked on the lead according to the above discussion, which should make it easier to implement these changes. @ Remsense 聊 : there is no need to be intimidated. It is just a matter of working on it, and making changes for the better. Some of this is going to be very incremental. And it's a lot. However at this point, obviously implementing some organization to this area of Wikipedia is in order, as we have been discussing. Dcattell (talk) 18:34, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I would ask that you wait at least for another week or so to see if any comments on the split proposal trickle in. And yes! I'm just mean that I have a lot of plates in the air right now, many of them large articles about China, and I do not want to leave a job half-finished because I'm working on too many things at once. Remsense  留  18:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Good. I am in no particular hurry. Before I do anything major I want to take a better look at the current article, and maybe make some minor improvements, or try to organize it better. Maybe add some references along the way. Also I want to do a better survey of what related articles (Chinese calendar and horology) we already have on Wikipedia. Then I'll have a better idea where we are at. I'm not planning on starting any new articles at the present time, and if I do, nothing major. Take your time! Dcattell (talk) 18:56, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I couldn't make it all the way through the article. I'm not saying I could structure an article on this topic more better, but anyway. Some things I'm noting as missing, in no particular order and without citation at the ready:
 * When the 閏月 (intercalary months) were typically intercalated, because
 * Eastern Zhou states had their own calendars and intercalated their bonus months at different points in the year
 * The different calendars adopted in the Han and Xin based on grand astronomical conjunctions projected via 五行 tens of thousands of years in the past (and ended up being less accurate than the calendars they replaced)
 * Zhou Wen Wang's mandate chronology, and the ripple effects that had on chronology of very early periods up until the 1900s
 * How we still don't understand what the lunar terms 初吉，即生魄， and 即死魄 found in Zhou dynasty bronze inscriptions actually indicate
 * How East Asian age reckoning (歲; also the word for Jupiter) meant that everyone got one year older at New Year's
 * The historical identity of "astronomer / astrologer" and "historian" (史; also the word for "scribe") and what that implied
 * Other than that, no offense intended to any involved but I can't understand what is trying to go on in this article. If more articles with tighter focus would help easily confused people like me, that sounds like a pretty good idea. Folly Mox (talk) 11:02, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I believe that the optimal plan for this article would solve outstanding problems listed above, as far as this article Chinese calendar goes. I support moving the article to Chinese calendar and horology. This would be a somewhat lean and stripped down version of the current article -- with some added brief sections, such as suggested above, and others, for example, Chinese astronomy, astrology, astronomers, astrological instruments, and dynastic variations. The idea being to provide a basic overview in a format which is generally capable of being read through and giving a reasonable outline for a general reader. The article would be somewhat shorter than the current article.
 * What is currently going on with the article is that it is an aggregate of various work on various topics in the general area of Chinese and related calendars, horology, and subtopics thereof, begun in 2001, subsequently much added to. I call this the Aristotelian approach: assemble the data and information and then try to figure the overall picture out afterward. Now the article should be restructured with a consideration of how the various topics and subtopics can be encyclopedicly organized. We are at the point now where we can have a good idea about what this article is about, and it is Chinese calendars and horology -- an immense topic not to be handled in detail in one article.
 * I have worked on the lead section and the next few article sections through the Lunisolar section, and I think the article is fairly readable thus far. I think that most of the rest of the article should be handled in more specifically focused sub articles. For example, many of the details in the history section could be moved to History of Chinese calendars and horology, Chinese lunisolar calendars, Chinese solar calendars, Modern Chinese horology, and so on. Certainly there are existing articles such as Solar term which can be linked to, leaving just a basic definition here. I think it is important to be flexible, since the best overall encyclopedic architecture still isn't completely clear, although it will rapidly get much clearer as other articles are written and developed.
 * I support an organizational hierarchy, with a top level article, which this article can be developed into. Below this would be articles of major topical importance, and below the level of major topical articles would be sub articles. Part of the challenge is to locate existing articles and see how they fit into this structure. For example, if you are interested in 歲, there are the Tai Sui article and East Asian age reckoning and almost certainly more, each with relevant information, but not linked together in a coherent way.
 * This sort of approach makes working on individual articles much easier and makes them much more accessible for readers, since it begins with a general umbrella article without to much technicality but providing a good overview, and leads to articles which lead to other articles in a way of increasingly more academic detail. With a good start, the system becomes almost self-organizing. Existing examples of this are the Chinese and Japanese poetry sections, with a Chinese poetry article (which was once similar to the Chinese calendar article now -- with various facts about Chinese poetry being added willy nilly) and similarly with Japanese poetry. Another good example is Chinese mythology which at one point was basically a mishmash list with unbalanced entries. The history of these articles and their current state proves the point about the usefulness of this approach for Wikipedia. It makes for a successful formula.
 * So there is my general blueprint for handling articles such as this organizing related subject matter in editorial space. It was fun to work on, and allows interested editors a structured space in which to contribute, which makes the editing experience easier and results in a better Wikipedia user experience.
 * Dcattell (talk) 18:37, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps chinese calendar history should be removed to a different article. I added the mansion, element, branches etc. tables recently as I was trying to understand the latest (2024) calendar I picked up at a local market (since it isn't in english and I can't read the characters).
 * I believe keeping all the various moving 'gears' of the turning 'wheels' in one place will add to the enjoyment of all of the parts of this intricate yearly cycle --- for us lay, non-character readers.
 * After all, the article's utility (and the calendar's beauty) is definitly the calendar's coordinating parts; thus having all such parts in one place seems a goal for an article labled 'Chinese Calendar'. However, explanation of the function of each part should probably be cursory, with linked expanded articles for each part. Likewise, history, might be better in a linked article.
 * Lastly, a cursory overview of how all parts function as a whole might be informative with linked articles for depth. A reader looking up 'Chinese Calender' wants an orderly mechanical overview, index, or gateway, a 'how to', without having to click around to assemble the pieces. After they have been drawn in they will want to link to other articles to expand their depth of understanding on meaning, history, philosophy, and metaphysics.
 * At least, that was what I was looking for when I came here and added not explanation but tables. 172.223.218.81 (talk) 22:24, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * So, there's a lot of nuance in this discussion, so I wanted to distill the current plan and make sure I've got the best plan:
 * Chinese calendar (serving as a summary-style, disambiguation-plus article)
 * Chinese lunisolar calendars
 * Chinese solar calendars
 * Modern Chinese horology
 * I'm unsure about how a history article fits into this schema—while it is obviously its own topic, I wonder if the space made within the main article would allow for the full history to be provided there instead. Remsense  留  22:56, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I am replying below. Dcattell (talk) 23:27, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * 25994130Cookie25994130@Dcattell 154.222.6.155 (talk) 07:42, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Current category trees
This depicts a tree structure version of the Chinese calendars category space:

Here are the trees for the remaining current transcluded categories: Chinese culture

These may be useful for considering in terms of organizing, such as creating new articles, and getting an overall view of this editorial space.Dcattell (talk) 19:22, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Replying to splitting proposal
Hi @Remsense, my plan right now is to keep chugging along with evaluating our (Wikipedia's) "Chinese calendar article. At this point I would like to take some time to evaluate the references already present, as well as to consult some others. And, to add some references, and to modify the article accordingly. This may only result in small incremental changes over a not so quick period of time. Also, there is a lot to look at in terms of what existing articles we have already. Anyway, I am not sure about how a history article fits into this schema. In fact, I am convinced that if you develop the "Chinese lunisolar calendars", "Chinese solar calendars", and "Modern Chinese horology" that our work here will be immeasurably enhanced. As far as "History of the Chinese calendar" article or whatever other articles may be developed down the road in the future, it's too hard to tell right now; however, as things go along they will get clearer (with each article that you do!).

Hi @Folly Mox, thank you for so helpfully chiming in to the talk messages here. I am sincerely hoping that you can stay in tune and help out even more in the near future as we work on this article! I am especially struck by your detailed historical points about the different dynasties and characteristics of their calendars. You mention the planet Jupiter. Just quickly looking through what we have on Wikipedia about Chinese cultural views about planets, especially Jupiter in this context, it seems that this an area which could use very more work on Wikipedia, in general. Also, the point about astronomy, astrology, and the role of government scribes (史) is well taken: indeed, this seems to open up some big new areas for this article which must be considered.

Hi @172.223.218.81, descriptive mathematics and working them up into tables are very valuable and essential contributions to our articles. I generally agree with you that a "reader looking up 'Chinese Calender' wants an orderly mechanical overview, index, or gateway, a 'how to', without having to click around to assemble the pieces." This can be done, probably not quickly and easily; but, definitely done steadily ad methodically. I also agree with your follow up comment about us Wikipedia users: "After they have been drawn in they will want to link to other articles to expand their depth of understanding on meaning, history, philosophy, and metaphysics." Much of this can be accomplished by appropriately linking to existing areas of Wikipedia, which may not be so hard, contributing together. I do not know if 172.223.218.81 is a permanent IP address for you. Have you considered registering as an editor on Wikipedia and creating a user page, since this may be helpful in interacting with other editors?

Thanks team!

Dcattell (talk) 23:25, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

creeping revisionism
It has been suggested that cultural marxism seeks to redefine truth to hide the uncomfortable past. I'd be careful to keep copies, so God, Lucifer, and Karma can compare to the original original, which contrary to popular opinion was the first version, not the latest scrubbing. Happy Karma! 180.254.66.149 (talk) 11:36, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Since no one has responded to this, might one suggest that one restate the point in alternate words, especially focusing on a specific detail or specific details that involve the topic of "Chinese calendar"? Dcattell (talk) 21:23, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Baby prediction
26 june age 26 2409:4051:184:F492:18E9:7F06:B37C:32B2 (talk) 07:02, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Sounds good! Dcattell (talk) 00:20, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Move from user space to edit space
Dcattell (talk) 22:13, 20 March 2024 (UTC)