Chinese Almanac Calendar

FAQ

#

What is a Chinese almanac?

#

The Chinese almanac — Huang Li (黄历) or Tong Shu (通书) — is a traditional day-by-day calendar that has been printed in China for centuries. Alongside the date, it lists what each day is considered suitable or unsuitable for, which symbolic stars govern it, and where the seasons stand. Households have long consulted it before choosing a date for a wedding, a move, or opening a business. This page shows that information for any day you click, together with the lunar date and the day’s stem-branch pillars.

How is the Chinese lunar calendar different from the Gregorian one?

#

The Gregorian calendar tracks the Earth’s orbit around the Sun: every year is 365 or 366 days. The Chinese calendar is lunisolar — it tracks both. Its months follow the Moon, beginning at each new moon and running 29 or 30 days, which makes twelve lunar months about eleven days short of a solar year. To stop the calendar from drifting away from the seasons, an extra “leap month” is inserted roughly every three years, giving that year thirteen months. That is why Chinese New Year lands on a different Gregorian date each year, and why this tool marks leap months explicitly.

What are the 24 solar terms?

#

The 24 solar terms (jieqi, 节气) divide the year by the Sun’s position along the ecliptic, one term roughly every 15 days — Start of Spring, Grain Rain, Great Heat, Winter Solstice, and so on. They are the solar half of the lunisolar calendar and were the practical guide to the farming year. Because they follow the Sun rather than the Moon, each term falls on nearly the same Gregorian date every year. The calendar above marks the term days, and each day’s detail shows the current term and how many days remain until the next.

What do “suitable” and “unsuitable” mean on a given day?

#

These are the almanac’s yi (宜, suitable) and ji (忌, unsuitable) lists — activities such as offering sacrifices, travelling, breaking ground, or signing contracts. They are derived from the day’s stem-branch combination together with the traditional cycles of governing stars, and they represent a body of inherited date-selection convention rather than a prediction. They are presented here as cultural heritage, for reference and study only.

What are the three pillars shown for each day?

#

Chinese metaphysics labels each unit of time with one of 60 stem-branch pairs. Every day carries a pillar for its year, its month, and the day itself. Note that the month pillar changes at a solar term, not at the lunar new month, so it will not line up with the lunar date shown on the same screen — this is expected, and it is the convention used in destiny analysis.

A birth chart (Bazi) needs a fourth pillar for the hour, which a calendar day cannot supply. If you want the full four-pillar chart with ten gods and luck periods, use the Bazi Calculator.

What is a “yellow path” day?

#

Traditional date selection sorts the twelve governing stars of the day into two groups. Six are huang dao (黄道, “yellow path”) and count as favourable; six are hei dao (黑道, “black path”) and count as unfavourable. Days on the yellow path are marked with a gold dot in the top corner of the calendar cell. It is one signal among several — the suitable and unsuitable lists still matter.

Learn more about the Five Arts of Chinese metaphysics and explore other divination tools.