Learn
Calendar basics
Solar terms & seasons
Calendar history
- A short history of the Chinese calendar
- Calendar change in the Qin and Han periods
- Calendar science and institutions in the Tang period
- The Shoushi calendar and its evidence
- The Shixian calendar and seventeenth-century reform
- Gregorian adoption and continuing lunar observance in China
- Astronomical offices and calendar authority
- Researching a historical Chinese date
- Dunhuang calendars: a window into everyday time
Collections & artifacts
Glossary
Festivals & observances
- Chinese New Year and the Spring Festival
- Lantern Festival
- Qingming
- Dragon Boat Festival
- Qixi Festival
- Zhongyuan and Hungry Ghost Festival
- Mid-Autumn Festival
- Double Ninth Festival
- Winter Solstice Festival
- Laba Festival
- Cold Food Festival and its relationship to Qingming
- Dragon Head-Raising Festival
- Shangsi and third-month-third observances
- Hanyi: winter-clothing offerings
- Spring and autumn She observances
- Temple fairs in the New Year season
- Festival date rules at a glance
Customs, food & symbols
- The Fu character
- Spring couplets and doorway texts
- New Year prints and household renewal
- Paper cutting for calendar festivals
- Lantern forms and festival uses
- Red envelopes and gift-giving conventions
- Numbers and wordplay in festival life
- A calendar of festival foods
- Tangyuan and yuanxiao
- Zongzi and the festival calendar
- Mooncakes and Mid-Autumn gift culture
- Ang ku kueh and life-cycle celebrations
- Yusheng and lo hei
- Lion dances in the festival calendar
- Dragon dances and ritual calendars
- Dragon-boat racing and community calendars
- Getai in Singapore’s seventh month
- Opera in temple and festival calendars
- The moon rabbit across traditions
- New Year greetings and their contexts
Almanac
- How to read a Chinese almanac
- Yi and Ji: what the almanac recommends and avoids
- Why printed and online almanacs disagree
- Pengzu taboos: the two sayings beside a date
- Chinese double hours and the split Rat hour
- The twelve day officers: reading jianchu
- Clashes and directions in the almanac
- Presiding deities and day paths
- How traditional date selection works
- The Xieji Bianfang Shu as an almanac source
- Hong Kong almanac publishing
Zodiac & cyclical time
- The twelve zodiac animals
- Ganzhi: how the 60-part stem-and-branch cycle works
- The sixty stem-branch combinations
- When does the Chinese zodiac year start?
- Wuxing: the five phases
- Nayin and the thirty paired classifications
- Nine-star systems in calendars
- The twenty-eight lunar mansions
- Bazi basics: reading the eight characters
- One’s own zodiac year: Benmingnian
Religious observances
- Chinese lunar dates in Buddhist observance
- Buddha’s Birthday and different observance dates
- Yulanpen and the seventh-month Buddhist calendar
- How to read a temple’s annual calendar
- The Three Officials and the Three Yuan dates
- Jade Emperor birthday calendars
- Mazu’s birthday and temple observances
- Earth-deity days, monthly offerings and Weiya
- Ancestral remembrance across the year
- Jiao festivals and local ritual cycles
Birthdays & family
Places & communities
- Qiang New Year on its own terms
- How regional customs travel with migration
- Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance
- Cheung Chau Jiao Festival
- Yu Lan practices in Hong Kong
- Tin Hau observances in Hong Kong
- Mazu pilgrimage calendars in Taiwan
- Qixi and coming-of-age at sixteen in Taiwan
- The development of Mid-Autumn barbecue in Taiwan
- Wangye festivals and multi-year cycles
- Singapore’s seventh-month community calendar
- Seventh-month observances in Penang
- Imlek in Indonesia’s official and community calendars
- The Phuket Vegetarian Festival calendar
Calendar traditions
- Chinese and Vietnamese calendar differences
- Tet and Chinese New Year: related, not identical
- The Korean lunisolar calendar
- Seollal and Chinese New Year
- Chuseok and Mid-Autumn Festival
- Historical Japanese calendars
- Old-calendar, same-month-and-day and delayed festival dates in Japan
- Tanabata and Qixi
- Rokuyo and Chinese almanac classifications
- The Tibetan calendar and its variants
- Mongolian calendar rules and traditions
- Comparing lunar-day concepts across systems