Chinese Festivals

In 1912, the Republic of China officially adopted the Gregorian calendar used in the West, but the old lunar calendar, calculated more than four thousand years ago, has persisted, and it is according to this system that all the traditional Chinese festivals are celebrated to this day.

By the Chinese lunar calendar, there are twelve months to every year, some months having twenty-nine days and some thirty days. Every two or three years, there is an ‘intercalary month’, or the same month repeated successively. The last month and the first month, however, are never duplicated. Each month is numbered and is thus called ‘the first moon’, ‘the second moon’, etc. When a ‘thirteenth’ month occurs, it is called, for example, ‘intercalary fifth moon’, or ‘intercalary ninth moon’. This system came about after Chinese astronomers established the relationship between the sun, the moon and the stars, and their effect on the change of seasons. They noticed that the cycle from new moon to new moon took about twenty-nine and a half days, and that twelve moon cycles made 354 days. But a true solar year, they were aware, took 365¼ days. They resolved the problem this caused most ingeniously by adding seven intercalary months every nineteen years, and in such a way that the winter solstice would always fall in the eleventh month, the summer solstice in the fifth, the spring equinox in the second, and the autumn equinox in the eighth.