Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/02/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Well.... while a good number of Asian countries and their descendents in distant lands such as myself and Phong celebrate the lunar New Year, the 4702 years is Chinese only. I doubt Vietnamese (where the word Tet is from) uses that. There is a sizable number of Chinese or Chinese descendents in Vietnam and other SouthEast Asian countries, but I would say most relationships between the nations are cordial at best since the old Chinese emperors had a nasty habit of sending troops here and there and demanded other countries to pay tributes. As a very interesting note though, my astronomer friend xeroxed some articles for me about a dozen years ago (alas, this is before the Internet, and I can't find references via google!) that a researcher at CalTech or something showed that at the start of the Chinese calendar around the New Year, there was a spectacular planetary conjunction with the new moon. The event is very rare and the author surmises that it made such a strong impression on the ancient Chinese that they fixed the calendar on the event! At 07:21 AM 2/9/2005, Mark Rabiner wrote: >Happy 4702! > >What I want to know is.... > >What happened 4702 years ago!?! >I bet it was pretty good! // richard (This email is for mailing lists. To reach me directly, please use richard at imagecraft.com)