There are various types and subtypes of the Chinese calendar and horology, which over a millennium plus history has produced many variations, currently mainly associated with the 21st century nation state of the Peoples Republic of China. The topic of the Chinese calendar includes various traditional types of the Chinese calendar, of which particularly prominent are, identifying years, months, and days according to astronomical phenomena and calculations, with generally an especial effort to correlate the solar and lunar cycles experienced on earth—but which are known to mathematically require some degree of approximation. Typical features of early calendars include the use of the sexagenary cycle-based ganzhi system's repeating cycles of Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches. The logic of the various permutations of the Chinese calendar has been based in considerations such as the technical from mathematics and astronomy, the philosophical considerations, and the political, and the resulting disparities between different calendars is significant and notable. Various similar calendar systems are also known from various regions or ethnic groups of Central Asia, South Asia, and other areas. Indeed, the Chinese calendar has influenced and been influenced by most parts of the world these days. One particularly popular feature is the Chinese zodiac. The Chinese calendar and horology includes many multifaceted methods of computing years, eras, months, days and hours.
Wade–Giles is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from a system produced by Thomas Francis Wade, during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert A. Giles's Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892.
Year 812 (DCCCXII) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar, the 812th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 812th year of the 1st millennium, the 12th year of the 9th century, and the 3rd year of the 810s decade.
Year 645 (DCXLV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 645 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Year 618 (DCXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 618 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Chinese names are personal names used by individuals from Greater China and other parts of the Sinophone world. Sometimes the same set of Chinese characters could be chosen as a Chinese name, a Hong Kong name, a Japanese name, a Korean name, or a Vietnamese name, but they would be spelled differently due to their varying historical pronunciation of Chinese characters.
Korean era names were titles adopted in historical Korea for the purpose of year identification and numbering. Era names were used during the period of Silla, Goguryeo, Balhae, Taebong, Goryeo, Joseon, and the Korean Empire. Various Korean regimes officially adopted the era names of Chinese dynasties.
Song is the pinyin transliteration of the Chinese family name 宋. It is transliterated as Sung in Wade-Giles, and Soong is also a common transliteration. In addition to being a common surname, it is also the name of a Chinese dynasty, the Song dynasty, written with the same character.
A calendar era is the period of time elapsed since one epoch of a calendar and, if it exists, before the next one. For example, it is the year 2024 as per the Gregorian calendar, which numbers its years in the Western Christian era.
Yi Xing, born Zhang Sui, was a Chinese astronomer, Buddhist monk, inventor, mathematician, mechanical engineer, and philosopher during the Tang dynasty. His astronomical celestial globe featured a liquid-driven escapement, the first in a long tradition of Chinese astronomical clockworks.
Astronomy in China has a long history stretching from the Shang dynasty, being refined over a period of more than 3,000 years. The ancient Chinese people have identified stars from 1300 BCE, as Chinese star names later categorized in the twenty-eight mansions have been found on oracle bones unearthed at Anyang, dating back to the mid-Shang dynasty. The core of the "mansion" system also took shape around this period, by the time of King Wu Ding.
A regnal year is a year of the reign of a sovereign, from the Latin regnum meaning kingdom, rule. Regnal years considered the date as an ordinal, not a cardinal number. For example, a monarch could have a first year of rule, a second year of rule, a third year of rule, and so on, but not a zeroth year of rule.
Li Chunfeng was a Chinese mathematician, astronomer, historian, and politician who was born in today's Baoji, Shaanxi, during the Sui and Tang dynasties. He was first appointed to the Imperial Astronomy Bureau to help institute a calendar reform. He eventually ascended to deputy of the Imperial Astronomy Bureau and designed the Linde calendar. His father was an educated state official and also a Taoist. Li died in Chang'an in 670.
Cui, alternatively spelled Tsui or Tsway, is one of the 80 most common surnames in China, with around 0.28% of the Chinese population having the surname. It is also one of the most common surnames in Korea, with around 4.7% of the population having the surname in South Korea.
There are many romanization systems used in Taiwan. The first Chinese language romanization system in Taiwan, Pe̍h-ōe-jī, was developed for Taiwanese by Presbyterian missionaries and promoted by the indigenous Presbyterian Churches since the 19th century. Pe̍h-ōe-jī is also the first written system of Taiwanese Hokkien; a similar system for Hakka was also developed at that time. During the period of Japanese rule, the promotion of roman writing systems was suppressed under the Dōka and Kōminka policy. After World War II, Taiwan was handed over from Japan to the Republic of China in 1945. The romanization of Mandarin Chinese was also introduced to Taiwan as official or semi-official standard.
Ashina Jiesheshuai was a member of the Ashina clan of the Eastern Turkic Khaganate and general (Zhonglangjiang) of the Tang dynasty.
Chinese era names were titles used by various Chinese dynasties and regimes in Imperial China for the purpose of year identification and numbering. The first monarch to adopt era names was the Emperor Wu of Han in 140 BCE, and this system remained the official method of year identification and numbering until the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912 CE, when the era name system was superseded by the Republic of China calendar. Other polities in the Sinosphere—Korea, Vietnam and Japan—also adopted the concept of era name as a result of Chinese politico-cultural influence.
"Beijing" is from pinyin Běijīng, which is romanized from 北京, the Chinese name for this city. The pinyin system of transliteration was approved by the Chinese government in 1958, but little used until 1979. It was gradually adopted by various news organizations, governments, and international agencies over the next decade.
The Chongzhen calendar (Chinese: 崇禎曆; pinyin: Chóngzhēn lì; Wade–Giles: Ch‘ung2-chên1 Li4) or Shixian calendar (Chinese: 時憲曆; pinyin: Shíxiàn lì; Wade–Giles: Shih2hsian4 Li4) was a historical edition of the lunisolar Chinese calendar from 1645 to 1913. It was developed by the lead of Xu Guangqi with the assistance of the Jesuit scholars Johann Schreck and Johann Adam Schall von Bell from 1624 to 1644, and was dedicated to the Chongzhen Emperor. When he died a year after it was released, it was propagated in the first year of the Qing dynasty by the Shunzhi Emperor, who changed its name to Shíxiàn calendar.
The Yale romanization of Mandarin is a system for transcribing the sounds of Standard Chinese, based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It was devised in 1943 by the Yale sinologist George Kennedy for a course teaching Chinese to American soldiers, and was popularized by continued development of that course at Yale. The system approximated Chinese sounds using English spelling conventions, in order to accelerate acquisition of correct pronunciation by English speakers.
