The coolest thing about the Chinese calendar is in the long term it's more astronomically accurate than the Western Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian calendar gets out of sync with Earth's revolution around the sun by one day per 3200 year. So after half a million years July will switch up summer and winter. But the Chinese calendar has auto-syncing functionality built in so it will remain perfectly accurate until the sun explodes in 5 billion years.
I'm looking forward to someone 5 billion years from now tearing off a page on their calendar and seeing, “Your lucky star is Sol, which explodes today. Good day for spicy food.”
Please keep this transitional calendar !! It’s so valuable cultural things make us so special than western culture 😍 I would love to teach my grandchildren how to read it 🥰
I grew up with these calendars. After an absence of 2 decades, I happened to be walking by a print shop in Central on my last day of vacation. I saw these calendars available for sale and promptly bought one and stuffed it in my suitcase at the airport. I see a little piece of hong kong every day when I tear off a sheet. My mom uses the torn off sheets to write notes, shopping lists, and random stuff, so its not wasted. Never knew what all that stuff on the bottom was about. Thank you for the video. And the hat, and the bag, and all that sweet swag!
I'm Turkish and we had our own version with prayer times, baby names, recipes, proverbs etc. Tearing off a piece brings so much nostalgia. Our Mediterranean shops would usually have these out throughout the year for free. Just looking at this makes we want to collect all the various tear off calendars in existence.
My Thai colleague still use this to find an auspicious date and time to move her stuff to new desk when she got promoted 😁. I found it very fun. One time I even asked to see her calendar to find a good/ auspicious time to talk with my boss 🤣
@@Goldthread Nothing was certain with my boss at the time, but one thing for sure it is a ‘good’ time. 🙈 yep, knowing this gave me encouragement and moral support ✌🏻
We tear off the page the night before, so in the morning, you have the correct date :D Once in a while we unscrew the back plate to remove the ragged edges, then put the plate back on!
Dude! Back in my day, I counted it as a privilege. I could hardly wait to tear one. There were times I tore it before bed so no one could the next day.
There is still a lot of missing information. For example, the first day of the month in Lunar Calendar is always "New Moon", while the fifteenth day is always "Full Moon". Every second month is a short month (29 days) and long month (30 days), therefore, 6 x 29 + 6 x 30 = 354 days, it is 11 days short from Gregorian Calendar (365 days per year or 1 circle around the sun). If it continues the same pattern without adjustment, the Lunar Calendar will getting behind. Therefore, every once a while, there is a leap month (extract month), thus you always find the Lunar New Year is always between mid-January to mid-February but never on the same day each year.
I lived in the American South as a young child, and the Vietnamese market would give us one yearly; it was bilingual, mainly in Vietnamese but also in Chinese, so we were able to read its contents. I live in California now and I do not think they give these almanacs away much anymore. Sometimes large retail businesses that cater to restaurants and smaller businesses give them away, it seems, but they definitely are not common giveaways anymore. Even the regular calendars Asian markets do not give out much nowadays. Many religious goods shops, bookstores, and stalls in Chinatown and flea markets/swap meets do still sell them.
I think it's a cultural thing, I guess Chinese culture likes a multifunctional tools, from one cleaver for all cooking works, chopsticks for picking, tearing, and stirring food, to calendar containing everything from date to when is a good day for marriage, and a chat app that does everything under the sun (in time I guess...)
I grew up with these green and red calendars bc my family is Chinese, but never understood anything but the month, day & year. I really wish someone can translate it to an English version. I would be very interested in knowing more about my daily almanac things.
My grandma and my aunt always use this kind of calendar when I was kid... I always take it to make a paper plane or boat... Now, I use monthly calendar instead tear off daily calendar...
For whose who are aware of the application of the Chinese time keeping tradition, the year 2020 is really the year 101,155,938 of the last known synchronization with the planetary system.
I once saw an interview with a large construction company's lead engineer in China said they have to follow these calendars because the Feng Shui, despite not scientific, is semi accurate with the weather forecast (mainly in rain and cloud).
You can find these kind of calendar in most of East and Southeast Asia. Whereever there is signicant Chinese community. There is also local variations.
The new ones have text for example: good for offering sacrifice to goals and bad for netting. But doesn't mean I can't use a rod for fishing. The large calendars have colourful design. Last year, there's was picture of pig eating honey glazed ham, like okay promoting self cannibalism. Upcoming Ox year is challenging for those born in year of the Ram. The calendars are accurate in predicting blue moon where there's 2 moon in the month. Still fascinating video.
Thank you so much for such a meaningful and educational video. I love to see more such video that educate us more about the traditional Chinese culture that many younger generations don't understand.
since a kid I get used to tear the calendar, for more exact detail things my grandpa would see ming-lik or tong-sing every year, he would buy it. even after my granpa passed away, I still read the calender, for example for cutting hair day for this january 2021 would be in good day at 18th and 30th
When the old man showed the Chinese calendar on his hands, mentioned what's the recipe on the Chinese calendar, I realized that Chinese calendar exactly same as my house's Chinese calendar. I'm tearing off the pages of the calendar every day!
My mom still bought those tearaway Calendar and hang them on my family home's wall. And yes they included all those things. A bit of ironic since she's the only who could read them.
sometimes you need to ask the cashier in the chinese store to buy it They put that product away, and keep it as a bonus gift to long term customers sometimes. Yeah, i grew up in china but don't know why they would do that. Probably it's too cheap to be made profitable.
Wow. I basically ignore the calendar at home. It's like a must calender to have at home yet no one uses it. The last few years the days aren't even ripped. It's a calender full of pages in December when there should only be a few pages instead
My dad loves these tear off Chinese calendars. No wonder he loved them because he is a gardener, makes sense right? lol My mum loves to keep certain pages for special dates like our birth or wedding days. My mum would always referred to them for choosing wedding days. I always wondered how the heck she know what is a good day? Now it makes sense, what all that text means. I never even took notice until now that it meant something. I probably should go back to learn Chinese.
I loved this documentary, it was very informative and fun. I have been collecting these for my own collage work each year and always wondered what all the characters were. I thought they were advertisements, lol!
This is why we should call it the Chinese New Year instead of the lunar New Year, because the method to determine the date of the New Year is the traditional Chinese calendar instead of the lunar calendar.
I have this calendar at home. I use it everyday for auspicious times. Also which animal sign are dominant that day is important. There is also good luck numbers. I don't use it that much. Something similar in the west is the farmers almanac. All Farmers go by the lunar cycle it is more accurate for plantings, growing schedule and seasons.
I love those calenders. I would always admire it as a kid and ask questions, when my grandparents were still with me. Now however, I can't read them cause i can't read Chinese (now, i have to contend with reading the tarot)
I use personal chinese metaphysics (fengshui for personal) expert to do all calculations for me. She calculated from my born day as detail as hours and minutes.
My mom hangs all these calendars she gets from the Asian markets. I wanna throw them out but she wants to keep them even though they're over 5 years old!
The prediction on future of Chinese almanac not just gambling without calculation,the statement on how the weather and agricultural mostly come true,how or when the cloud pouring rain are predictable
SO what did everyone miss here? It's not what's in the calendar. It's the calendar's ability to count to 60 years. In the Gregorian calendar we think in terms of century. In the Chinese calendar it's in terms of 60 years. 60 seconds. 60 minutes. It gives a sense of punctuality.
This makes me link to Bible Genesis .14: Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years...
we young generation use handphone to set alarm and set notification and at the end we hate annoying notification and delete it and regret it after that alarm didn't notify Dang ...
Thanks for this I was always wondering why my mom was always consulting this calendar. But the thing is she lives in S F not China so it might not be accurate.
So many people mistakenly call the Chinese calendar l lunar calendar. Glad you set them straight! You should make a video on how the Chinese New Year is determine each year. It’s the most important day on the Chinese calendar!
Really?? I would have thought it would be the same. How accurate are they then if that is so? We always had one coming up but I never had two I could compare.
