Source: CCTV news client
The dragon is one of the most important totems of the Chinese nation, and in the eyes of Chinese, it represents auspiciousness. And today (10th) can be said to be full of dragon energy, with a very high dragon content, because from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. on April 10, 2024, we ushered in the first "Dragon Year Dragon Moon Dragon Day Dragon Time" of the year. How did such a special moment come about?
Year of the Dragon, Dragon Moon, Dragon Day, Dragon Time
It is the time of the year, the month, the day
Yang Fan, Deputy Director of the Center for Ancient Astronomy at the Beijing Planetarium: The dragon is the only animal in the Chinese zodiac that does not actually exist, but it occupies a unique position in traditional Chinese culture and is endowed with sacred and auspicious meanings. This is actually a saying formed after the conversion of the Ganzhi discipline and the zodiac discipline in the traditional Chinese timekeeping method, which refers to the year, the moon, the day, and the time, and the Chen matches the dragon in the zodiac. Therefore, every time this time is the so-called dragon year, dragon moon, dragon day, dragon time.
What is Ganzhi Age?
How to match the sexagenary branches?
The expert mentioned one word - Ganzhi discipline. We often say that the sexagenary branch, as the name suggests, the stem branch discipline is closely related to the sexagenary branch, what is the stem branch year, and how is the sexagenary branch collocated?
Yang Fan, Deputy Director of the Paleoastronomy Research Center of the Beijing Planetarium: The Ganzhi Chronology is established on the basis of the 10 Heavenly Stems and the 12 Earthly Branches, the 10 Heavenly Stems are the nails, B, C, D, E, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, and Gui, and the 12 Earthly Branches are Zizi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, and Hai. For example, the first child in the heavenly stem and the first child in the earthly branch are paired to form Jiazi, the second in the heavenly stem and the second in the earthly branch are paired to form B Chou, and so on. After the tenth dec in the heavenly stem and the tenth unitary in the earthly branch are paired to form a decyl unitary, the heavenly stem starts from A and matches the eleventh unit in the earthly branch into Jiaxu in turn, and the least common multiple of 10 and 12 is 60, so when it is paired to the sixtieth pair, it is just the last dec of the heavenly stem, and the last Hai of the earthly branch is matched to form a decay to complete a cycle, and the next reincarnation is counted again from Jiazi.
Year of the Dragon, Dragon Moon, Dragon Day, Dragon Time
How is it calculated?
Knowing the collocation method of the stem branch year and the sexagenary branch, you can calculate the dragon year, dragon moon, dragon day, dragon time.
Yang Fan, deputy director of the Beijing Planetarium Paleoastronomy Research Center: The Ganzhi year is to correspond to each year and the Ganzhi, the so-called 61 Jiazi is to say that 60 years of a Ganzhi reincarnation, the ancients also corresponded to the 12 kinds of animals or genera in turn with the twelve earthly branches, and the dragon in fifth place corresponds to Chen, and there are 5 dragon years every 60 years.
Yang Fan, deputy director of the Center for Ancient Astronomy Research of the Beijing Planetarium: What's going on with the dragon day? In ancient China, in addition to counting the days with numbers like 123, the ancient Chinese people also used the method of counting the days by the dry branches, and astronomers calculated the dry branches of the winter solstice in advance, and then arranged the calendar days of the following year according to the order of the dry branches, so that every 60 days there were five chen days, that is, five dragon days.
Yang Fan, Deputy Director of the Center for Ancient Astronomy at the Beijing Planetarium: The dragon moon is divided into 12 months in the traditional Chinese calendar, but this month is divided by the synodic month. We may now be more familiar with using numbers to represent months, but the ancients also corresponded the twelve earthly branches to the month of December. More than 2,000 years ago, it was determined that the month where the winter solstice solar term is located is the sub-month, and the month of the winter solstice in the next year is then the sub-month, and the leap month is not counted. Since the Qin and Han dynasties, the traditional Chinese lunar calendar is essentially the Yin Zheng calendar, that is, the Yin month is the first month, that is, January. Therefore, the sub-month where the winter solstice is located is the eleventh month of the lunar calendar, so if the earthly branch of the month is matched with the zodiac, the third month of the lunar calendar is the moon of the dragon. The ancients also divided a day and night into 12 hours, corresponding to the twelve earthly branches, and set the current 23:00 to 1:00 as the sub-time, and the time of the hour is 7:00-9:00 in the morning, which is expressed in the order of the zodiac, and the time of the hour is the time of the dragon.
Technology restores dragon-shaped clam ornaments
Enrich the image of the Red Mountain Dragon
On this day when the dragon content is extremely high, there is also good news related to dragons. With the help of scientific and technological means, after months of hard work, yesterday, the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences finally succeeded in restoring the dragon-shaped mussel ornament of the early Hongshan culture.
What we see is the restored dragon-shaped clam ornament, the dragon-shaped clam ornament is not large, the main body length is only about 20 centimeters, but the restoration is not small. It is understood that the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences cooperated with the Palace Museum and the Beijing Institute of Technology team to carry out non-destructive CT scanning and image segmentation on the box to obtain detailed three-dimensional data of the dragon-shaped mussel ornament, and then carried out countless 3D simulation splicing, and finally restored the dragon-shaped mussel ornament unearthed last year. This dragon-shaped mussel ornament was unearthed in the site of painted pottery slope in Songshan District, Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia, and belongs to the Hongshan culture in the West Liaohe River Basin. The Hongshan culture dates back to about 6,500 to 5,000 years ago. Experts believe that the dragon-shaped mussel ornament may be earlier than the C-shaped dragon, the first Chinese dragon in the late Hongshan culture, enriching the dragon image in the Hongshan culture.