Chapter 15 Section 8 Talking about the Calendar from "Children Debate the Day"

In an ancient book called "Liezi", there is such a story recorded: When Confucius went to the East for a study tour, he saw two children arguing fiercely on the road, and asked why they were arguing?Child A said: "I think the sun is closer to people when it just rises, and far away from people at noon." Child B said: "It is because the sun is far away from people when it first rises, and it is closer to people at noon." Said: "When the sun first rises, it is as big as a car cover, but at noon it is only as big as a pan or bowl. Isn't this because it is smaller when it is far away, and larger when it is close?" B said: "When the sun first rises, people feel cold. , at noon, the sun is so hot that people feel like soaking in soup, so it’s not that the sun is hot near and cool far away, what is it?” From this story, we can see that our ancestors paid great attention to observing the sun very early, And explore the laws of the sun's movement.People feel the change of a day from the sunrise and sunset, and the change of a year from the change of seasons.People also came up with the concept of the moon from the cycle of the full moon and the waning of the moon.At the same time, people also noticed that the stars in the sky are also changing, and this change is repeated and follows certain rules.Thus, the calendar was born.

Our country's calendar probably began in the late Neolithic Age, experienced the development of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, and was relatively mature in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.The ancient quadrant calendar used at that time set the time of a return year as 3651/4 days, the time of a synodic month as 29 (499)/(940) days, and set seven leap months in 19 years.These data were quite advanced in the world at that time.The value of the length of the tropical year is only 11 minutes longer than the true value. The Julian calendar adopted by the Romans in 43 BC also used this value, which is about 500 years later than our country. In the 19-year seven-leap method, Meton in ancient Greece was discovered in 432 BC, about a hundred years later than our country.The calendars of later generations in our country were all developed on the basis of the ancient four-part calendar, and were constantly revised and improved.People are used to calling the traditional calendar of our country the lunar calendar, which is actually wrong. In fact, the traditional calendar of our country is a combined yin and yang calendar, that is, the year uses the length of the earth's revolution around the sun, and the month uses the moon (also known as the lunar calendar) to go around the earth. The length of one revolution.

At the same time, my country's traditional calendar has a close relationship with agriculture.In order to reflect the changes of the seasons more accurately, the year is divided into 24 equal parts in the calendar, that is, an average of 15 days is set for one more solar term.The setting of solar terms is unique to the traditional Chinese calendar, which makes it easier for people to correctly grasp the farming time and arrange farming affairs, and plays a guiding role in agricultural production.Therefore, China's traditional calendar is also called the lunar calendar.