Lunar Calendar

Lunar calendar is very complicated.  But once you understand it, it is not that difficult to figure it out.  It can be subdivided into 4 parts: a) 10 Heavenly Stems b) 12 Earthly Stems c) 12 Zodiac Signs/Animals d) Year of the Ruling Party

10 Heavenly Stems (the first line of alphabets are only for easy understanding in the later explaination)

12 Earthly Stems & 12 Chinese Animals/Zodiac Signs (the first line of Roman numbers is only for easy understanding in the later explaination) Click here to check out what is your zodiac sign

In ancient China, instead of using numeric format for year, like year 2001, year starts from the combination of the 10 Heavenly Stems and the 12 Earthly Stems. The above 10 Heavenly Stems are put in alphabetical order while the 12 Earthly Stems are in the Roman numeric order for simple explaination.  It starts from A&I, B&II.......J&X, A&XI, B&XII, C&I  and so forth.  (please refer to the diagram below)

After 120 years, the order will start from A&I again.  In order to solve the problem of the "same years" after the cycle, the ruling emperor's years of rules was added.  Nowadays, it would be the year of the People's Republic of Chia. Also, each year is assigned an animal to represent (as seen on the diagram above).  The 12 Earthly Stems are used for each animal accordingly for fortune-telling use. Each year has 360 days.  The longer months have 30 days each while the shorter ones have 29 days.  Each day has 12 units which are represented by the 12 Earthly Stems as well.  Each unit contains 2 hours.

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