Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/01/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi Phong - I am glad you do agree that the Chinese and Vietnamese refer to the same calendar - what you are defining are adjustments for geographical differentials - but Doug Heer spelt out the rules which I think answer it all. Happy New Year to You. Joseph Low - -----Original Message----- From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Phong Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 3:56 AM To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us Subject: RE: [Leica] Happy New Year ! Joseph Low wrote: > > Phong - no coincidence - historically the Vietnamese adopted the Chinese > Lunar Calendar - therefore CNY & Tet will always be simultaneous :) Hi Joseph, What you say is common belief, even among many Vietnamese, though I beg to differ; while the two countries use the same rules* to compute the calendars, there two reasons the calendars sometimes differ: 1. The Vietnamese use meridian 105 East (Hanoi) and the Chinese use meridian 120 East (Beijing) for the calculations, thereby there are times when the calendars differ. A simple example is the case when the moment of the first new moon occur between 11:00 and 12:00PM Hanoi time; in that case the New Year would occur one day later in the Chinese calendar than the Vietnamese one. In rare cases, the New Years may be a (lunar) month apart. 2. Even when using the same rules, errors were not infrequent, resulting in different calendars in the past. I don't expect we see this much in modern times. It is true that historically, there were times when Vietnam adopted the official Chinese imperial calendar. And it is also true that in the vast majoity of the cases, the New Years coincide. But the Vietnamese, with their fierce spirit of independence, insist on the difference. :-) By the way, chinese calendrical calculations and astronomy is a topic of great interest to me. See for example the stuff covered by the late Joseph Needham's "Science and Civilisation in China, Volume III, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and Earth". Haapy New Year ! - - Phong * Here are the rules: 1. All calculations and observations are based on the meridian 120 degree East (115 degree East for Vietnam) 2. The day starts at midnight (it used to start at the beginning of the first hour, the hour of the rat, which starts at 11:00pm) 3. The day on which occur the new moon is the first day of the month 4. The winter solstice (dong zhi jie qi) must fall in the 11th month of the year 5. If there are 13 lunar months between 2 winter solstices, one of them must necessarily not have a zhongqi**; that month is the leap month in the corresponding year (hence a leap year has 13 lunar months). ** The solar year is divided into 24 jieqi, each corresponding to positions of the Earth along its orbit, each 15 degree apart. The length of each jieqi varies from 14 to 16 days, varying with the speed of Earth along its orbit. Every other jieqi is a zhongqi; the winter solstice is a zhongqi. - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html