Chinese Lunar Calendar
2 min readChinese Lunar Calendar
Background and Concept The Chines animal signs are a 12-year cycle used for dating the years.They represent a cyclical concept of time，rather than the Western linear concept of time.The Chinese Lunar Calendar is based on the cycles of the moon，and is constructed in a different fashion than the Western solar calendar.In the Chinese calendar，the beginning of the year falls somewhere between late January and early February.The Chinese have adopted the Western calendar since 1911，but the lunar calen-dar is still used for festive occasions such as the Chinese New Year.Many Chinese calendars will print both the solar dates and the Chinese lunar dates.
Background Information
In traditional China，dating methods were cyclical，cyclical meaning something that is repeated time after time according to a pattern.A popularfolk method which reflected this cyclical method of recording years are the Twelve Animal Signs.Every year is assigned an animal name or“sign”according to a repeating cycle:Rat，Ox，Tiger，Rabbit，Dragon，Snake，Horse，Sheep，Monkey，Rooster，Dog，and Boar.Therefore，every twelve years the same animal name or“sign”would reappear.
A cultural sidelight of the animal signs in Chinese folklore is that horoscopes have developed around the animal signs，much like monthly horoscopes in the West have been developed for the different moon signs，Pisces，Aries，etc.For example，a Chinese horoscope may predict that a perooal son born in the Year of the Horse would be，“cheerful，popular，and loves to compliment others”.These horoscopes are amusing，but not regarded seriously by the Chinese people.
The animal signs also serve a useful social function for finding out people’s ages.Instead of asking directly how old a person is，people often ask what is his or her animal sign.This would place that person’s age within a cycle of 12 years，and with a bit of common sense，we can deduce the exact age.More often，though，people ask for animal signs not to compute a person’s exact numerical age，but to simply know who is older among friends and acquaintances.
