In Chinese mythology, there were once ten suns instead of one. Every day, they would take turns circling the sky; one day, however, they grew tired of following this law of nature. They all emerged at once, drying farmland and killing crops. Eventually, after years of famine and suffering, a hero stepped forth, drawing his bow and shooting down nine suns. Of course, he was rewarded for this with a pill of immortality, with which his wife floated away to live forever on the moon in a tragic turn of events -- but that’s another story. Today, we know that these folktales are, in fact, not true. However, their legacy has shaped entire civilizations.

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I grew up on the dusty streets of Tianjin, a city in China -- a nation delightfully rich in culture and festivities, if nothing else. It’s widely known that we have two separate calendars by which we mark our days: the Solar Calendar (阳历, Yang Li; literally “bright record”) and the Lunar Calendar (阴历, Yin Li; literally “dark record”). While the Yang Li Calendar (essentially the Gregorian one) is what people go by now -- kids write Yang Li dates on their worksheets, professional documents are signed off with them, etc --  the Yin Li Calendar hasn’t become obsolete. In perhaps one of the few lingering tributes to our culture, all of our traditional festivals and celebrations -- marked, usually, by historical accounts of fantastically earth-shaking events such as the ten-suns myth -- are still determined by Yin Li dates.

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The Yin Li Calendar, also known as the Farmer’s Calendar (农历, Nong Li; literally “agricultural record”), is, as its name suggests, largely depends on the phases of the moon, although it is considered lunisolar. Its 29-to-30-day months start on one new moon and ends at the next, taking very special note of the full moon on the 15th for auspicious reasons. Its years count days from the beginning of one spring to the next. Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival (春节, Chun Jie), marks the first of a year, and is usually the most significant celebration of the year. The concept of “weeks” was not widely used in historical China -- although interestingly enough, in modern days, weeks are called 星期, (Xing Qi, literally “star periods”), despite having little connection to the celestial plane (that I could discern, at least).

 

However, as the celestial objects tend not to fit perfectly with these insignificant constraints we call time, into which we try so hard to stuff them, there is the need for “intercalary months” -- something like the leap years that we have in the Gregorian Calendar, but not exactly. The Gregorian Calendar remedies the uncooperation of the celestial sphere by adding an extra day into the year every “leap-year”. In contrast, approximately every three years, the Chinese Yin Li year has thirteen, instead of twelve, months. Incidentally, this is where the phrase “blue moon” comes from -- when an extra full moon appears in addition to the usual twelve in a year. When this “odd month out” is added depends on the Metonic cycle -- a cycle which ends with the Moon returns to the exact same position it was at the start of it. This is also a period of approximately 19 years which comes as close as we’ll get to the synchronization of both the Lunar and Solar calendars, being the common multiple of years from both calendars. The Chinese also have a Zodiac; each year is assigned a different “animal” in a cycle of twelve years, which goes Rat - Ox - Tiger - Rabbit - Dragon - Snake - Horse - Sheep - Monkey - Dog - Chicken - Pig. For instance, I was born in the year of the Tiger, and my brother, who was born fourteen years before me, was born in the year of the Rat. There is some belief in that one’s Zodiac affects one’s personality; but otherwise, it’s largely different from the Gregorian one.

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All of this information was compiled with a few days of research and contextualized with a couple months of college-level classes; but I can only imagine how long it took for these patterns to become so commonplace that a single Google search could suffice in retelling them. Somewhere along the line, the ancient Chinese looked up at the sky and created mythological tales around these things in the sky which they did not understand: gave them names, folklore, and backstory. They imagined the nine suns falling down from the sky, hissing as they hit the vast sea and vaporized into steaming air. They thought they glimpsed a beautiful woman, ethereal and glimmering, mourning on the moon for those she left behind on earth; concocted horrifying tales of a beast who came at the beginning of ever Lunar Year, eating children and ravaging houses. And then, these humans -- miniscule compared to the celestial objects they were studying -- noticed the pattern in the moving objects in the sky, and eventually used it to categorize their days, months, and lives; and the folktales became just that: stories that we learn about in the first grade.

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Yet on the fifteenth day of every eighth Lunar month of the year, we make sure to sit under the full moon, eating little round cakes and egg yolks to symbolize our respect for the woman who sent herself on the moon, to be alone for eternity, to protect humanity. On the first of every Lunar year, we drop all obligations and gather together with our families and friends around heaps of warm food to celebrate the start of spring, and if any “beasts” are scared away by the laughter and cheer, well, that’s just a plus.

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Science itself will continue to define and explain natural phenomenons, as well as dispel myths and tales and folklore. I’m not a student of science, but I think that’s beautiful, that we as a species, hideously insignificant compared to the universe, are working hard in order to someday, in a very far future, become significant to it. But no matter how far we go, I don’t think we’ll lose ourselves along the way.

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The science of the astral plane -- the earth’s orbit, the moon’s phases, the seasons and months -- is made all the more beautiful knowing the stories behind them, before we ever knew them as more than “bright dots in the sky”. We will continue to infuse our astronomical discoveries and scientific breakthroughs with humor and warmth, empathy and humanity, and I think that that’s pretty beautiful, too.