Text丨Look at the present
Editor丨Look at the present
Why is the Chinese lunar calendar the greatest calendar in the world?
If you ask a farmer this question, he will answer: farming depends on the lunar calendar.
If you ask a matchmaker, she will answer: Since ancient times, men and women have to look at auspiciousness according to the lunar calendar.
If you ask an astronomy enthusiast, he will answer: it is more accurate to observe the celestial phenomena to see the lunar calendar.
24 solar terms, traditional festivals, seasonal changes...... Life is inseparable from the lunar calendar, and the dependence on the lunar calendar is not only in China but also in other countries in the world that still use the lunar calendar.
There are three classic questions in philosophy: Who am I, where do I come from, and where am I going?
There are also three questions about the lunar calendar: what is the lunar calendar, when was the lunar calendar created, and what is the future development of the lunar calendar?
Many people will think that now most people don't farm, don't pay attention to traditional culture, and use the Gregorian calendar more, what is the use of the lunar calendar?
"What do you belong to? Have you celebrated the Qingming Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival? Have you heard of the 28 constellations?"
The lunar calendar seems to be less important anymore, but in fact, it has long been integrated into everyone's life, just like breathing and drinking.
The lunar calendar we use today has a history of thousands of years, and it is said that it has existed since humans began to settle down to raise livestock and grow crops.
In the era of Rumao drinking blood, ancient humans lived by hunting and gathering, they only knew that the change of day and night was a day, not knowing the month and year, with the beginning of growing food, human beings needed to master the appropriate season, too cold, too hot, too early and too late, tribes also needed accurate dates for mutual wars, and it was best to record them, and the calendar as a necessity of life urgently needed to be created.
When human beings feel confused, they look up at the sky, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and the moon is cloudy and sunny.
The solar calendar is a calendar produced by the sun as a reference, also known as the solar calendar, although it rises from the east, but carefully record the position of the sun shadow on each day, you can find the subtle differences, when the initial sun shadow position overlaps, it means that a year has passed, the earth has completed a revolution, with the spring equinox day as the interval, this time is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds.
In fact, if we take a distant star as a reference, the actual time it takes for the Earth to orbit the Sun is 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes and 10 seconds, which is called a "sidereal year".
Compared with the change of the solar calendar in years, the moon orbits the earth for a shorter period, about 29.53 days to complete a moon phase change, while the moon itself has the same rotation and revolution as 27.32 days.
The moon itself does not shine, the moonlight that people see comes from the light that reflects the sun, with the change of the relative position of the sun, the position of the moonlight that people see is also different, resulting in the new moon, Emei moon, first quarter moon, waxing gibbous moon, full moon, waning gibbous moon, second quarter moon, waning moon different changes, the time of each moon phase is relatively fixed, when the specific day is not known, it can be inferred according to the moon phase.
Compared with the solar calendar, the moon phase has to change 12 times to catch up, so there are 12 months in a year, and there are a total of 354 or 355 days in the year, which is 11 days less than the solar calendar.
This is the later lunar calendar, adding the solar calendar on the basis of the lunar calendar, so we say that the lunar calendar is a lunisolar calendar, mainly taking the day where the time of the new moon is located as the first day of the month (the first day of the new month), the big month is 30 days, the small month is 29 days, and the big month and the small month make up for each other, so that the average length of the calendar month is close to the synodic month.
In life, people are Xi to equate the lunar calendar with the lunar calendar, in fact they are two calendars, and the lunar calendar also includes the solar calendar.
Speaking of this, we have to mention that the use of the 24 solar terms of the millennium, as a supplement to the lunar calendar, played a particularly important role in ancient agricultural cultivation.
"The spring rain shocks the spring and the valley sky, and the summer is full of mangs and the summer is connected. Autumn dew, autumn frost, winter snow and snow and winter small and big cold. ”
People compile 24 different solar terms into songs, so that astronomy, natural rhythms, and folk customs are cleverly combined, and the development of agriculture is guided by oral singing.
Many netizens expressed the magic of the 24 solar terms like this-
Whether it is agricultural planting or weather changes, thousands of years later, the 24 solar terms are still very accurate, which makes people have to admire the wisdom of the ancients.
Since the preliminarily determined in ancient times, after 24 dynasties such as the Xia, Shang, Western and Zhou dynasties, there have been 102 calendars in history, which are of great significance to the development and evolution of Chinese civilization, until the establishment of the Republic of China abolished the lunar calendar and adopted the Gregorian calendar, which is the Gregorian calendar we use now, although the lunar calendar is not used as a mainstream calendar, but our life and cultural inheritance are inseparable from the lunar calendar.
Today is January 9, 2024 in the Gregorian calendar, and the converted lunar calendar is November 28, 2023, 32 days before the Lunar New Year.
Having said all that, what exactly is the lunar calendar?
It is the current traditional calendar of China, which is a lunisolar calendar, which is a calendar that adds 24 solar terms and sets leap months to adapt to the average calendar year and the return year, and its history can be traced back to the ancient times when there is no written record of human beings, and it is the crystallization of human wisdom.
How do you see the future development of the lunar calendar?
As the second most populous country in the world, 1.4 billion people in mainland China are using the lunar calendar, not to mention Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, Mongolia, South Korea and other countries that also use the lunar calendar, and roughly speaking, at least 1.6 billion people in the world are using the lunar calendar.
The lunar calendar combines the lunisolar calendar, with the addition of 24 solar terms, guiding agricultural cultivation, every Chinese who go out is deeply affected by the lunar calendar, which has virtually become the basic cultural factor that unites overseas Chinese, not to mention that the United Nations determined the traditional festival Spring Festival on the mainland as a United Nations holiday some time ago, and the influence of the lunar calendar will only increase.