year of the monkey -date is wrong

[SifuAbel]

Originally posted by GeneChing
do some research beyond just looking at stuff in English.

And xin nian kuai le

Ok lets start with few off yahoo:

http://www.chinapage.com/newyear.html

http://123chinesenewyear.dgreetings.com/

http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/2004.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/featu...new_year.shtml

http://chineseculture.about.com/b/a/056313.htm

http://www.hkfastfacts.com/Festivals-in-Hong-Kong.html


there are to many to list

[GeneChing]

Here's the link for Feb 2004 - http://www.chinapage.com/astronomy/2004-02-L.gif - if you look at FEb 4th, you'll see the characters in the upper corner for Li Chun. Chun is the same character as in Wing Chun, which means "spring." Technically, if you use Feng Shui, new years starts on Li Chun. Now if you look at Feb 20th, you'll see four characters, the first two are er yue, or "2 moon." Look at March 21 - http://www.chinapage.com/astronomy/2004-03-L.gif - and you see five characters, the second two are er yue again, preceded by the character ren which means "leap". Well, sort of. So that's the leap year.

Now before we beat this into the ground too much, we need to establish what we are discussing. You're saying the date is wrong. I'm saying that there are two dates - a celebrated CNY and an actual CNY. It's sort of like how we move some holidays to Mondays to make a 3-day weekend. In this case, the Chinese have moved the holiday to follow the moon to make up for the leap month, which is actually to make up for the inaccuracies of their calendar, just like our leap day. Actually our date is more accurate despite being more obscure, but it's just not the celebrated date. It's kind of like comparing David Carradine's Kung Fu with the Kung Fu everyone claims to know here on this forum.

Personally, I wish our Feng Shui Master Wilson Sun had been more clear about this distinction, so I wouldn't have had to research all this trivia. Despite my skepticism on astorlogy and Feng Shui, he's been quite accurate, and his prediction of the beginning of the war was within hours, so I'll support his research. Actually, what I find most interesting here is the revelation of the intricacies of Chinese culture - something I'm always grappling with as a translator. Had Master Sun been more clear, we would have explained this all in the initial introduction, but how we were to know all this leap month stuff. Did you even know that the Chinese calendar had leap months? Since the last one to land in February was some 50 years ago, few people have ever seen this new year displacement effect. But again, like so many things Chinese, few people try to plumb it's depths - they only scratch the surface - the Chinese included. Sometimes our research goes too deep and we lose people, but for me, I'd rahter get the deep stuff.

[SifuAbel]

Sounds like Confucian bureaucracy to me.

A lunar year that doesn't go by the lunar cycle? The old pagan in me is .

Its saying, Your calanders don't fit, too bad. LOL!

[GeneChing]

Our western months don't correspond to the moon - months/moonths - so why should we expect the eastern lunar years to do so either? When you think about it, calendars must have been pretty tough to create back in the day.

All I can say is that Feng Shui is funky. Crazy superstitious babble, if you ask me. Of course, right when I'm ready to completely disregard it, Wilson will make an accurate prediction. **** eerie. He predicted a shoulder injury I had quite precisely. I work on translating his horoscopres, then promptly forget them. But after I had this injury, I was re-reading some of his stuff and he called it. The day I realized his prediction was correct, he appeared somewhat magically and did some work on it for me (he does really good dit da). I just wish he could have predicted this monkey date debacle so I didn't have to think so hard about it in answering the queries it raised. It's just that funky feng shui messing with my head again.

[GeneChing]

Remember when I said you should do your research? That means a little more than just a yahoo search. You gotta read what you find too. Check out this quote from the 3rd link posted above (http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/2004.htm)

The Chinese New Year day is on January 22nd, 2004. Because this is a new moon day, it is the first day of the first Chinese lunar month in the Chinese Lunar Calendar system. The new moon time is at 05:05 on 22-Jan-04 in China time zone. However, the new moon time is at 13:05 of 21-Jan-04 in the US Pacific Standard Time and also at 10:05 of 21-Jan-04 in the US Eastern Standard Time, so the Chinese New Year day is on January 21st, 2004 for USA time zones. In the Chinese Fortune-Telling calendar, the first day of the first month, Tiger month, is called "Start of Spring", which is when the sun enters the 315th degree on the tropical zodiac. In the China time zone, the time of Start of Spring is at 02-04 19:56. So the first day of the Green Monkey year 2004 is on 04-Feb-03. For USA, the time of Start of Spring is on 02-03 at 03:56 PST, therefore the first day of 2004 Chinese astrology calendar in USA is same to China time zone. If a baby was born on or after the Start of Spring, then she or he is a Green Monkey in the family.

[SifuAbel]

Thankfully, I'm not a fortune teller.

So GONG HEY FAT CHOI!!!!!!!!

[anton]

Originally posted by GeneChing
...It's kind of like comparing David Carradine's Kung Fu with the Kung Fu everyone claims to know here on this forum.

BWAHAHHAH! gold!!

[norther practitioner]

GONG HEY FAT CHOI

[Bluesman]

I was watching the news before work and saw where the Chinese stood in line for over two hours at a temple just to rub a stone monkey for good luck. I walked over to my wife and asked if she wanted to rub the monkey for good luck before I left. Women just don't have a sense of humor.

[SifuAbel]

LMAO!!