[Leica] Happy Tet !

[jim at hemenway.com (Jim Hemenway)]

I know it's now the "Year of The Rooster", but I can't seem to stop 
writing "Year of the Monkey" on my checks!

;-)


Phong wrote:
> Mark Rabiner wrote:
> 
>>My local Leica Vietnamese friends told me that Vietnamese people
>>follow the Chinese calendar.
>>
>>Strange as they are millenniums long enemies!
>>
>>But how can you hold a war if the armies show up at the wrong dates!
> 
> 
> Interesting that you should bring up this enmity and the calendar.
> 
> First, your Vietnamese friends, though Leica and local, do not know their
> calendars, as most Vietnamese and Chinese.   Ask any of them how
> they can tell the New Year of every year and watch them draw a blank
> stare.   You can surpise them by telling them then  that it is the 2nd new
> moon after the winter solstice (not true for all years).   Even if they 
> knew
> that
> the coup de grace will certainly one these next questions:
>       How do you tell which year is a leap year ?
>       In a leap year, how can you tell which month is a leap month ?
>       Or even more common, how do you tell which month has 29 days
>      and which has 30 days ?
> 
> I know quite a few Vietnamese :-) and Chinsese and I know exactly one
> besides me who can answer those questions without looking up a calendar.
> 
> About the Chinese/Vietnamese enmity and the calendar:
> In pre-modern days, only the Emperor can decree the calendar;
> and publishing or even using any other calendar is high treason,
> and punishable with death.  It is at least as serious as using currency
> not issued by the imperial court.
> 
> The Vietnamese, always mindful of their  independence, always
> insis on using their own calendars, though clearly it is derived from
> the Chinese.  (I will get hate mail from Vietnamese ultra nationalists
> for this), except when under direct Chinese occupation.   There is
> a line in the Vietnamese imperial history of the Vietnamese king who
> accepted Chinese rule, and even in the very terse prose of the time,
> where every word of every line is carefully weighed before put down
> on paper, it was written that "he accepted the calendar from the Chinese
> emperor".
> 
> While the Vietnamese calendar was derived from the Chinese, the rules
> were not always the same, as they were refined at different times 
> throughout
> the centuries.  Even if they use the same rules, the resulting calendars 
> may
> not/are not the same.  This is possible because of 2 reasons:
> -   The determination of key astronomical events: which day is the new 
> moon,
>      which day is the solstice.   These are not so easliy answered when
> science
>      is not so advanced, especially when planetary conjunctions occur need
>      midnight.
> -   The geographical point of reference, specicifally the longitude.
> Because
>      of the resulting difference in local time, a solstice may occur a day
> ealier
>      or later, causing a potential shift of 1 month in the New Year.  This
> in
>      fact, happened in 1985, when the Chinese and Vietnamese New Year
>      differ by one month.
> 
> 
> Even the Chinese do not use the same calendars;  at different
> times in Chinese history, the different emperors  in the divided country 
> use
> different calendars.  Even today, Taiwan through Academia Sinica, insists
> that they are the legitimate issuer of the calendar, though I have not done
> much research with that calendar to see how different;  I am certain though
> that some dates will differ with the Mainland China one.
> 
> Calendar as a symbol of political power is certainly not unique with
> the Vietnamese and Chinese.   England (hence pre-revolution US)
> which did not recognize Papal authority rejected the Gregorian calendar
> reform of 1582,  and continued to use their own calendar until 1752.
> Similarly with the Protestant countries of Europe (the Protestant German
> countries).    Csarist Russia never made the change, and even though
> the former USSR switched to the Gregorian calendar after the revolution
> of 1917.
> 
> In fact, the Chinese/Vietnamese calendar differences remind me a lot
> of the difference in the determination of Easter in the various Christian
> traditions.  (By the way, very few Christians know how to determine
> the exact date of Easter, which also relies on an astronomical event,
> the spring equinox).
> 
> Speaking of Tet and armies and calendars, there are two famous ones
> in Vietnamese history.
>  -  1789,  Nguyen Hue defeated the invading Chinese in a battle on
>      the New Year.  He had his troops celebrate Tet 5 days earlier,
>     and surprised the Chinese.   The Chinese considered this as
>     a sneak attack, the Vietnames consider this a masterful use of
>     imperial power to change the calendar.   :-)   [Technically this is
>     not possible, as he did not become emperor shortly after.  Perhaps
>     he declared himself emperor before ?]
> -  the Tet offsensive in 1968 by the Viet Cong, very well known among
>     Americans of that generation.   What is very little known is that the
>     summer   before,  the authorities in  North Viet Nam had decreed a
>     change in the  calendar thus making Tet occur one day earlier than in
>     the South.  Hence  the North Vietnamese troops could celebrate Tet
>     before they go to war.   And yes, North and South Vietnam had different
>    calendars, (which agree most of the time).  Had the CIA know more
>    about Vietnamese calendars, they might have made more sense of
>    that trivial change.
> 
> So Mark, tell your Vietnamese friends that they should buy their
> calendar from the correct source, or else they may find themselves
> celebrating on the wrong day, as many Vietnamese did, who bought
> their calendars published in Hong Kong.
> 
> So, that's my Tet story for my LUG friends
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> - Phong
> 
> 
> Note that when I refer to the Vietnamese and Chinese, when writing
> about calendars, I always refer to the Chinese first, as a recognition
> that our calendar was derived from them.  Unless I have such a specific
> reason, I mean to always refer to Vietnamese first.   :-)
> 
> 
> ========== Chinese/Vietnamese calendrical rules =================
> Here are the calendrical rules for the Chinese/Vietnamese calendar:
> 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.
>