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The New Year has the meaning of growing older (Image source: Adobe stock)
In the world, perhaps only the Chinese have two ages, one full year old and one empty year old. Maybe most people can still explain clearly what “one year old” means. But how “virtual” the virtual age is is a confusing thing. Chinese people often use a word called “virtual age” when talking about age.
nominal age
What is virtual age? The fictitious age is a method of recording age relative to the actual age (now collectively referred to as one year old). As the name suggests, “virtual” means false, and “real” means true. The imaginary age is the traditional Chinese method of calculating age. It is based on years and is an approximate calculation method that seeks to maximize the age. A person is counted as one year old in the year he or she is born, and one year old increases every new year thereafter. What is different from modern times is that in ancient times, virtual age was the only way to remember the age. The so-called sui refers to virtual age, and there is no concept of virtual age.
There is no concept of zero as the starting point in the virtual age, and there is no way to remember a person’s special birthday. According to folk custom, only before a hundred days ago, people will calculate the size of a newborn baby in days. Once the hundred days pass, people will no longer calculate his age in days or months, but in terms of age. Calculate age in years. Theoretically, a person is considered to be one year old as soon as he is born, and will grow one year older every year thereafter. For example, a person born on March 15, 1990 is considered to be one year old before New Year’s Eve in 1991, and as soon as New Year’s Day arrives, he is considered to be two years old. In this way, during the period after the New Year of 2000 and before March 15, this person’s full age will be counted as nine years old, and his fictitious age will be counted as eleven years old. There will be an error of two years between the two.
Ancient people used pregnancy as the starting point to calculate life
Many young people in modern times do not understand this. Young people often ask what virtual age is. There are often several misunderstandings: Some people think that this is the product of the Chinese people’s concept of “almost”. Chinese people do not have a scientific spirit. Everything is “about the same”. Regarding age, we can only estimate it roughly, not accurately. The unit of calculation is years, not months and days. Some people also think that this is due to the Chinese people’s “taking advantage” mentality. Who doesn’t want to live a few more years? Talking about a false age satisfies people’s psychological state of begging for immortality, and everyone is happy to hear it. Some people think that this is a difference in the calculation of the starting point of life. Modern people use birth as the starting point, while ancient people use pregnancy as the starting point to calculate life, because when a person is born, he has “existed” in the mother’s body for ten months. This is obviously problematic: can babies born less than a month old be counted as half a year old? Suppose a person is born on the first day of the first lunar month and is one year old at the time of birth. If there is a leap month in that year, he will be twelve months old by the twelfth lunar month. Doesn’t he also have to be one year older? Then during the New Year, don’t you have to be one year older? Didn’t he grow three years older in that year? There seems to be some truth to these statements, but I’m afraid they are just speculation or inference and have no basis in historical records.
Why is there false age?
To understand the virtual age, one must understand two aspects of knowledge, one is the scientific knowledge of ancient Chinese astronomy and calendar, and the other is the national character of the Chinese ancestors.
The calendar is based on astronomical observations. The ancients observed the rising and setting of the sun, the cycle of day and night, and developed the concept of day. The so-called “day” refers to a day and night. Observe the changes of the moon’s waxing and waning, from the full moon through the waning moon, and then to the full moon. The concept of “moon” is derived from the changes of the moon’s waxing and waning. The so-called “year” is a cycle of cold and summer, vegetation withering and flourishing. The establishment of the concepts of year, month and day is the basis for the creation of the calendar. The characteristic of the ancient Chinese calendar is that it adopts the luni-solar calendar, that is, the movement cycle of the sun is used as the year, the moon’s waxing and waning cycle is used as the month, and leap months are used to coordinate the relationship between the year and the month.
This characteristic of the calendar caused the inaccuracy of the ancient Chinese calendar. If the calendar is formulated according to the above provisions, there will be strange phenomena in which the weather and the calendar are not consistent, and the time sequence is disordered and reversed. The twelve synodic moons make up the lunar year, which is 354.3672 days long, nearly eleven days less than the Tropical Year, and each month is 0.91 days less, or nearly one day. If the lunar year is composed of thirteen lunar months, its length is 383.8978 days, which is more than eighteen days longer than the tropical year. As a result, in the ancient Chinese calendar, the year is relatively accurate over a relatively long period of time, but the day is not convenient for one-to-one correspondence. A certain day of this year’s month and a certain day of last year may not necessarily match up. If a person was born on the third day of the leap month this year, how will he celebrate his birthday next year?
Birth date and zodiac sign
Zodiac signs (Image source: Adobe Stock)
The ancient Chinese did not have the concept of what we now call “birthday”. The words closest to the meaning of “birthday” are “birthday” and “birthday”. The concepts of birthdays and birthdays are not completely the same as birthdays. Birthdays use days as the smallest unit, which is a day with twenty-four hours of day and night; birthdays and birthdays use hours (time) as the smallest unit. The ancients regarded a day as a day. Time is divided into twelve hours, which are represented by twelve earthly branches and are called twelve hours. In the ancient Chinese concept of birthday, the date is just one element of recording the time of birth. It goes hand in hand with the year, month and hour without any emphasis; while the Western concept of birthday emphasizes the month and date, so usually we When talking about a birthday, just say the month and day, not the year or the specific time. This is why the ancient Chinese did not pay attention to another aspect of birthdays.
Closely related to birth date is the zodiac sign. The zodiac sign is a method created by the ancient Chinese to record the year of a person’s birth using twelve animal images as representatives. Research has proven that the zodiac is based on the chronology of the stems and branches. Twelve animals correspond to the twelve earthly branches, and animals are used as symbols of the earthly branches. A person born in a year will be assigned an animal according to the earthly branch of that year. Twelve animals are used to record the year, date and calculate the zodiac sign of each person. Everyone will have a fixed zodiac sign. Rat, Chou, Ox, Tiger, and Rabbit, Chen, Dragon, Snake, Wu, Horse, and Sheep, Shen, Monkey, Unitary, Rooster, Xu, Dog, and Pig. We noticed that this method of remembering the years has some characteristics: First, it is based on years, and each year Corresponding to a zodiac sign, regardless of month, day and hour; secondly, there is no vacant position and no concept of zero. No matter how much time your life occupies in a year, even if it is only one day, everyone must have an zodiac sign. The false age is the result of this method of counting years.
Our ancestors had a very early understanding of the year. It is precisely because of the extremely early origin of the astronomical calendar in ancient China that determines the primitiveness of our ancestors’ method of counting years. Primitive thinking does not have the abstract concept of numbers. Our ancestors could not understand the time phenomenon of years, months and days, so they regarded “year” and “year” as concrete objects. In ancient Chinese legends, “Nian” is a monster that lives in the sea. It has long tentacles on its head and is extremely ferocious. It comes ashore every New Year’s Eve to devour livestock and harm people. The legendary “Sui” comes out every year on New Year’s Eve to kill children. One possible explanation is that the reason why the ancients recorded their years by years is because the ancients did not have the abstract concept of time and could only regard years and years as animals or monsters. Animals and monsters cannot be separated and can only be regarded as animals or monsters. Living a whole year can only add one whole year. This may be the origin of the Chinese New Year.
The New Year has the meaning of increasing one’s age, which is actually implicit in various specific activities during the New Year. Since ancient times, all parts of the country have had the same New Year customs, the essence of which is to pay New Year greetings. What is New Year greetings? New Year greetings in traditional culture involve visiting relatives in a family or clan, visiting elderly relatives, giving gifts, kowtows, and blessings to the elderly; at the same time, accepting New Year greetings from children and giving them lucky money. Why is there such an activity? It is because this day is regarded as everyone’s birthday. There is a classic couplet in the New Year, which is called “As time goes by, people live longer, and spring fills the world with blessings.” It best reflects the meaning of increasing age in the New Year.
Editor in charge: Wen Li
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