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Chinese lunisolar zodiac

Calendar explorer
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How to use Chinese calendar explorer

Convert a civil date into a modern Chinese calendar date and see why year names can differ around Lunar New Year, Li Chun or China midnight.

Inputs: Date from 1901–2100, local time, IANA time zone, and first/second occurrence if daylight-saving time repeats the clock. No coordinates are needed for this reference-calendar lookup.

  1. Enter an independent date or copy your saved birth values into the form.
  2. Select a year reference and calculate. China UTC+08 is the default.
  3. Read the full stem–branch year, lunar date and leap marker, then compare the other boundaries.
  4. Follow the attached rule sources. Download JSON to preserve the date, exact UTC instant, reference, result and glossary.
Reference-date example · China midnight

At 17:00 in New York on 9 February 2024, the entered local date is still 9 February, while China has reached 10 February and Lunar New Year. The references can therefore name different lunar years at the same instant.

Modern Chinese reference calendar only. Representative HKO checks do not establish every date in the full explorer range. The year animal is a cultural calendar label, not a personality assessment. Independent explorer dates leave the saved birth unchanged.

Open Chinese calendar explorer →All glossary terms →
Sources and conventions

History & development

The Chinese calendar coordinates lunar months with the solar year through intercalation. Its year animal is widely known, but the calendar also specifies a month, day and leap-month status. Modern observatory conversion tables make these date labels independently checkable.

Mythology & symbolic world

The twelve animals symbolize the earthly branches. Their cultural stories should be distinguished from the calendar algorithm: a story about an animal’s character cannot determine when a new moon occurs or whether a month is intercalary.

Provenance: where the rules come from

The explorer uses lunar-javascript 1.7.7 for modern Chinese date lookup and Swiss Ephemeris for the apparent tropical Sun at the Li Chun boundary. Thirteen selected 2023–2024 and 2033 dates are checked against Hong Kong Observatory tables, including leap months numbered 2 and 11. Those examples do not certify the entire 1901–2100 explorer range.

How it is calculated

Modern Chinese lunar date and sexagenary year; explicit local-date, China UTC+08 and Li Chun references.

Choices that change the result: Use Recorded date only without an invented clock, or enter an exact date/time/timezone to compare local-date, China UTC+08 and Li Chun references. Preserve leap months, repeated-clock choices and the recorded precision.

Inspect your calculated data →

Uses & use cases

  • Convert a recorded birthday into a stated Chinese calendar convention.
  • Understand how a lunar New Year boundary differs from a BaZi solar-year boundary.

Interpretation methods

Method 1

Read the selected year boundary

Open the Chinese calendar explorer and choose China UTC+08, entered local date, or Li Chun solar year. Attach the stem, branch and animal to that exact reference. The wiki reading and report use the selected reference for your saved birth; an independent explorer date leaves your birth profile unchanged.

Study example

At noon Hong Kong time on 5 February 2024, the lunar calendar still names Gui-Mao Rabbit, lunar month 12 day 26. The Sun has already crossed Li Chun, so the solar-year convention names Jia-Chen Dragon.

Method 2

Preserve the leap marker

Read lunar year, month, day and leap-month status together. An intercalary month repeats a number; a bare month number is incomplete.

Study example

21 March 2023 is ordinary month 2 day 30; 22 March is leap month 2 day 1 in the HKO tables.

Method 3

Use the date you actually know

Choose Recorded date only in the Chinese calendar explorer when the clock is unknown or approximate. The native lookup needs only the recorded Gregorian civil date. It returns the lunar date, leap marker and Lunar New Year-based stem–branch year. China date at an instant and Li Chun remain explicitly unavailable in this mode. Precision and provenance stay separate in the downloaded result. If an approximate interval crosses dates, this lookup covers only the recorded date; it does not establish one result for the entire interval. On this wiki page, explicitly select Entered local date to see the same native date-only reading for a saved unknown-time or approximate-time record. China date and Li Chun remain unavailable without a resolved instant; choosing a reference never silently substitutes another.

Study example

A record dated 10 February 2024 with unknown time can be looked up as lunar month 1 day 1, Jia-Chen Dragon, under the entered-civil-date convention. No UTC moment, hour pillar or Li Chun result is inferred.

Concepts in this tradition

Follow a term for its definition, word origin, evidence and connected ideas.

Chinese lunisolar zodiac →Lunar New Year →

Disagreements & limits

  • A Gregorian year number does not determine the Chinese year for every January or February date.
  • Reference meridian and date-boundary choices matter near transitions.
  • Leap-month numbering must survive export and display.
  • This modern reference-calendar explorer covers 1901–2100 with representative validation only; historical reforms and other regional lunar calendars remain separate.
  • The China option uses fixed UTC+08; the local-date option is a reference-table lookup, not birthplace-meridian lunar astronomy.
  • Calendar symbols do not supply a complete BaZi interpretation or evidence of animal-based personality traits.

Sources & evidence

Practitioner sources describe their own systems. Historical and astronomical sources support different kinds of claims. Reading exercises are editorial teaching examples.

  1. Gregorian–Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 1995 — Hong Kong Observatory ↗government calendar table
  2. The 24 Solar Terms — Hong Kong Observatory ↗government astronomical explanation
  3. Hong Kong Observatory · What year is it today? (Hui Tai-wai, April 2018) ↗official calendar convention
  4. Hong Kong Observatory · 2024 Gregorian–lunar conversion table ↗government calendar table
  5. Hong Kong Observatory · March 2023 almanac, leap second month ↗government calendar table
  6. Hong Kong Observatory · 2033 Chinese calendar, leap eleventh month ↗government calendar table

Connected entries

BaZi / Four Pillars / Saju →Zi Wei Dou Shu / Tử Vi →Phugpa / Tsurphu / Kālacakra →