Chinese calendar

The Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar created by or commonly used by the Chinese people. A total of 102 calendars have been officially recorded in classical historical texts. In addition, many more calendars were created privately, with others being built by people who adapted Chinese cultural practices, such as the Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, and many others, over the course of a long history.

A Chinese calendar consists of twelve months, each aligned with the phases of the moon, along with an extra intercalary month inserted as needed to keep the calendar in sync with the seasons. It also features twenty-four solar terms, which track the position of the sun and are closely related to climate patterns. Among these, the winter solstice is the most significant reference point and must occur in the eleventh month of the year. Each month contains either twenty-nine or thirty days. The sexagenary cycle for each day runs continuously over thousands of years and serves as a determining factor to pinpoint a specific day amidst the many variations in the calendar. The variety of calendars arises from deviations in algorithms and assumptions about inputs. The Chinese calendar is location-sensitive, meaning that calculations based on different locations, such as Beijing and Nanjing, can yield different results.

While modern China primarily adopts the Gregorian calendar for official purposes, the traditional calendar remains culturally significant, influencing festivals and cultural practices, determining the timing of Chinese New Year with traditions like the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac still widely observed. The winter solstice serves as another New Year, a tradition inherited from ancient China. Beyond China, it has shaped other East Asian calendars, including the Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese lunisolar systems, each adapting the same lunisolar principles while integrating local customs and terminology.