Today we mostly use solar calendars around the world. The Gregorian calendar, which is the most widely used, sets a year of 365.2425 days. It has leap years, so with this calendar, we have only one deflection of a day in 3,300 years. After it was announced by Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582, many Western countries started to use it as their main calendar. However, this wasn’t the case in Asian countries. Instead, Asian people used their own ways of tracking time until not so long ago. It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that Asian countries started to use solar calendars.

In modern times, these unique ways of tracking time are not mainly used due to their accuracy and usability issues but these time notions are still found in Asian people’s lives.

This article covers time notions mostly in East Asia, which includes Korea, China, and Japan.

The most representative among methods of tracking time in East Asia would be the lunar calendar. This calendar is based on the monthly cycles of the Moon’s phases. In Korea, we used this calendar until King Gojong (1852 ~ 1919) of the Joseon Dynasty commanded people to start using solar calendars in 1896.

As mentioned earlier, the lunar calendar still exists in Asian people’s lives. In Korea, we celebrate the two biggest holidays, Seollal (Lunar New Year’s Day) and Chuseok (Thanksgiving Day) on lunar calendar dates. We also take the day off on January 1st in the solar calendar, and many other holidays are also jumbled between solar and lunar calendars. The situation is similar in China, too. Chinese people have their four lunar holidays, including the Chinese New Year and Dano (It is the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. We have the same tradition in Korea.). In Korea, there are still some people who celebrate their birthdays in the lunar calendar. It is mostly for older people, but there are some families that still count their birthdays in the lunar dates even for their newborn babies. You can find lunar dates in solar calendars in East Asia written in small red characters.

<24 Seasonal Divisions>

People in East Asia used the lunisolar calendar, which originated in China. It is a lunar calendar, but revised to adjust to seasonal changes. However, it still had some faults regarding seasonal changes. In order to correct this error, 24 seasonal divisions were made to clarify seasonal changes. It was introduced in the late 13th century, during the Goryeo Dynasty and it was used by farmers to check the timings of the harvest. Seasonal divisions used in East Asia are based on the Sun’s location around the zodiac, which is divided into 24 sections. The dates of the 24 seasonal divisions are almost the same every year, but they differ by one or two dates every year. The Chinese seasonal division is named in Chinese characters. The interesting thing about its name is that these names involve meanings that we can still sympathize with. The names explain how the weather is around that date and what farmers should do, and they indicate the seasonal changes as well. The Chinese 24 seasonal divisions are included in the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The table below is a part of the Chinese seasonal divisions’ names (and how they are pronounced in Korean), dates, and their meanings. You can find the whole names in Chinese and their meanings of the 24 divisions in this link https://www.chinahighlights.com/festivals/the-24-solar-terms.htm .

The Chinese Zodiac is a classification scheme based on the lunar calendar which assigns an animal to each year in a repeating 12-year cycle. It is used in Asian countries, such as China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan, and it is called thee (띠) in Korean. Like there are 12 star signs in Western culture and people read their horoscopes using the signs, Asian people like to find out their fortune for this year with their zodiac signs. When finding out your zodiac sign, you have to know that the Chinese zodiac changes not by the start of a year but by lì chūn (approximately 4th of April). When lì chūn arrives, it is seen as a year having changed, so two people who were born in the same year could have different zodiac signs when one was born before lì chūn and the other after. Below are all the Chinese zodiac animal signs by each year of birth. You can see that this cycle repeats every 12 years. What is your zodiac sign?

Kim MinJi  alstbvj@naver.com

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