China recorded one hundred two official calendars across history
The traditional Chinese calendar is lunisolar: twelve moon-linked months plus leap months when needed to track the solar year. Historians count 102 officially recorded calendar systems. Modern China uses the Gregorian calendar for state business while festivals still follow the older cycle.
Alongside its moon-based months, the calendar tracks 24 solar terms that follow the sun and the climate. The winter solstice is the anchor and must fall in the eleventh month; it is still celebrated as a second New Year. Each month has 29 or 30 days. The character for calendar, lì, traces back to an ancient form showing two rice stalks side by side, a picture of order in space and in time. Common names include nónglì, the agricultural calendar, and lǎolì, the old calendar.
Before the Zhou dynasty, China used solar calendars. One divided a 365-day year into five phases of 72 days tied to the five elements; another used ten-day weeks, three to a month, slipping in an extra week in summer. Oracle bones show the Shang dynasty, from about 1600 to 1046 BCE, running a balanced calendar of 365.25-day years and 29.5-day months with 12 to 14 months a year. The Zhou introduced the first lunisolar version, starting the year at the new moon before the winter solstice, and the traditional form took shape during the Spring and Autumn period, 771 to 476 BCE. Rival states then issued competing versions.
Years were long counted by reigns and era names, from Jiànyuán in 140 BCE to Xuāntǒng in 1908; the system ended in 1912. Jesuit Martino Martini, in a 1658 book, dated the Yellow Emperor's accession to 2697 BCE, and European scholars compared such dates with Biblical chronology. Chinese reformers after 1903 proposed counting from the Yellow Emperor, but disagreed: Jiangsu called 1905 the year 4396, the newspaper Ming Pao 4603. Sun Yat-sen, announcing reforms on 2 January 1912, used a year 1 of 2698 BCE, which makes 2026 the year 4724.
The Republic of China tried to abolish the old calendar and even Chinese New Year, but met fierce resistance from people who needed it for farming, fishing and festivals. Today the Gregorian calendar runs official life, while New Year and the twelve zodiac animals follow the traditional reckoning, and Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese calendars descend from it.
Source: Chinese calendar
