Why do Chinese like to use virtual years to do things?

Chinese have the idea of imaginary age mainly because the traditional Chinese way of calculating age is different from the Western way of calculating age.

In China, imaginary age is a method of calculating age based on the traditional lunar calendar. According to the lunar calendar, there are different Gregorian calendar dates and times corresponding to each year, which makes the date of the Lunar New Year change on the Gregorian calendar. The imaginary year is calculated based on the timing of the Lunar New Year.

For example, if a person is born before the Lunar New Year, then his imaginary age will be one year older than his actual age; If a person is born after the Lunar New Year, then his imaginary age is the same as his actual age.

The concept of virtual age is widely used in civil and formal occasions in China, such as personal birthday celebrations, legal annual age limits, and civil servant recruitment. Although imaginary age is only a method of calculating age, it is deeply ingrained in Chinese society and is widely accepted and used in Wai Yu Dou.

It is worth noting that although modern China has adopted the Gregorian calendar as the official calendar system, the lunar calendar still has an important place in traditional Chinese culture, including the importance of the Lunar New Year and the celebration of traditional Chinese festivals. Therefore, as an age calculation method, virtual age has taken root in Chinese society and culture and continues to this day.

To ask this question, first of all, we must search for what Kai Ming Yin Nai Bai Xuan Sui means, the so-called virtual age actually refers to the time you spend in your mother's womb, understand the problem of the stove leaking spring, you can understand, why do you want to say that the oil is empty

Maybe it's just a way to say whatever you want.

The imaginary year is a method of keeping the age as opposed to the real year (now collectively referred to as the first year). As the name suggests, "virtual" means false, and "real" means true. Imaginary age is a traditional Chinese method of calculating age, which is based on years and is a method of estimating the budget by sacrificing the small to the large.

The year in which a person is born is counted as one year old, and the age is increased by one year for each subsequent Spring Festival. Different from modern times, in ancient times, the virtual year was the only way to remember the year, the so-called year, refers to the virtual year, there is no concept of the virtual year.

Why is there a virtual age? In order to understand the virtual year, we must understand two aspects of knowledge, one is the scientific knowledge of the ancient Chinese astronomical calendar, and the other is the national character of the Chinese ancestors. Imaginary age is a traditional Chinese method of calculating age.

The baby is recorded as one year old when it is born, and the age is increased by one year every Spring Festival in the future, so that the virtual age is often one to two years older than the first year, becoming a virtual one or two years old. A baby is counted as one year old at birth because it takes almost a year for the fetus to conceive in the mother's womb and to be born.

Imaginary year, is the traditional Chinese method of counting the year, it takes one year old as the starting point, takes the Lunar New Year as the demarcation point, a person is recorded as one year old in the year of birth, and then adds one year after each Lunar New Year. In ancient times, the virtual year is the only way to remember the year, the so-called year, refers to the virtual year, there is no concept of the year of the virtual year.

The age of one year is the internationally accepted method of calculating age. Starting from the age of 0 and taking the birthday of the solar calendar as the cut-off point, a person is recorded as 0 years old when he is born, and the age is increased by one year for each birthday of the solar calendar in the future.

Since there is no exact correspondence between the imaginary age and the first year, the age difference between the imaginary age and the first year of the year is not all simply one year old, but may be two years old, and in special cases, it may even be three years old, and the age difference between the imaginary year and the first year may be different at different times in a solar year.

For example, if a person was born on April 1, 2008 in the solar calendar and on the 26th day of the second month of the lunar calendar, the age after April 1, 2016 in the solar calendar is 8 years old and the imaginary year is 9 years old, a difference of 1 year. However, between the Spring Festival in 2016 and March 31 of the solar calendar, the age of 7 is 7 years old, and the imaginary age is 9 years old, a difference of 2 years. If a person was born on February 12, 2010 in the solar calendar and on December 29 in the lunar calendar, his or her age after February 12, 2016 in the solar calendar is 6 years old and 8 years old, with a difference of 2 years; However, between February 8, 2016 (Spring Festival) and February 11, 2016, the age of the year is 5 years old, and the imaginary age is 8 years old, a difference of 3 years. With such a large age gap between different methods of calculating imaginary years and first birthdays, it is no wonder that people who pursue youth nowadays avoid imaginary years and have a soft spot for them.

Since modern times, the Western method of counting age has gradually spread around the world and introduced to China. Therefore, there are two ways to count age in modern China. For the sake of distinction, the two are called imaginary years and first years respectively. In this way, it gives people the illusion that the Chinese have an extra illusory age.

The history of the imaginary year: the "Summer Calendar" is divided into a year of December, using the "fixed Shuo method" - taking the new day as the first day of the month, and dividing the return year into 24 solar terms, placing the leap in the month of the lack of middle qi, taking the Yin month as the first month, that is, Yin Zheng (later called Xia Zheng), taking the whole number of 366 days as one year, and using the subtraction method and the positive leap remainder to adjust the time difference.

However, the leap month of the "Summer Calendar" is very troublesome and erratic, so the actual number of years can only be calculated by adding the year at the end of the year, that is, adding one year in the last month of the year. If the year is increased by the beginning of the year, then the leap month must be carefully calculated, because the lunar calendar practiced in ancient China is a lunisolar calendar, and the number of days in each year is not fixed, and the difference between ordinary years and leap years is even a month. It's easy to confuse your age with the first age method.

Some people say that in the world, perhaps only Chinese have two ages, one year old and one imaginary. As for what "one year old" is, perhaps ordinary people can still explain it clearly. And how the virtual age is "virtual" is a thing that is easy to confuse.

Many people think that the result of adding one year old to one year is a virtual age. This is a specious statement. In fact, many times, the concept of the so-called "imaginary age" is generally only used for men, that is, "men enter women's full", which means that men calculate their age according to their imaginary years.

A woman's age is calculated according to her chronological age. Moreover, in the actual calculation, the imaginary age is not just as simple as adding one year to one year.

The specific calculation method of imaginary age is as follows: a person is considered one year old as soon as he is born; If the person happens to be born at the end of the lunar year, then not only is he one year old when he is born, but he will also be one year old on the first day of the new year, so that when the child is one year old, he will already be three years old according to the imaginary year.

Therefore, in the calculation of the virtual year, the Spring Festival is a particularly important point in time, and every time the Spring Festival passes, the virtual year should be added by one year. If a person's birthday is in the middle or late of the lunar month, then the person will be two years old before the full moon. It is obviously not entirely correct to simply think that the imaginary age is one year plus one year old.

Knowing this truth, we will understand why many elderly people tend to celebrate their 70th and 80th birthdays two years in advance.

In traditional Chinese customs, the age has always been imaginary; Foreigners adopt the age of one year. This reflects the differences between Chinese and foreign cultures.

The traditional Chinese custom uses the virtual age, which means that a person's life begins with the mother's pregnancy. The meaning of the first year is that a person's life begins at birth. This is the difference between Chinese and foreign cultures.

Since the country now officially uses the age of the year, people have gradually adopted and accepted the concept and concept of the age of the year. However, the traditional customs of the virtual years have been inherited.

The imaginary year is divided according to the lunar year, that is, according to the traditional Chinese festival Spring Festival, the year of birth is counted as one year old, and the year is increased by one year.

The first year is divided according to the solar calendar, and the year, month and day correspond to the year, month and day.

When I was a child, I always told others that I was a false age, and when I grew up, I told others that I was really old.

I'm going to say here that the virtual age and the first year old are not clear to many people In fact, some people agree with the first floor, some people don't agree with me, but I don't agree with the fact that I am 97 and belong to the ox 16 years old I think that the virtual age is the forward virtual year old You see me 97 yes, to 09 is not just the anniversary, just 12 years old, you see in the mother's womb is not counted, because he has not yet come to the world.

I'm pregnant in October, and the time in the belly is counted in the empty year.

There is a saying: "The Chinese regard October pregnancy as the first year, also known as the virtual age, this year, remember the hardships of ancient human reproduction, and remember the great grace of the mother's pregnancy in October." It also embodies the traditional virtues of the Chinese of respecting the old and loving the young."

If this Chinese public statement is true, then it is logical that Chinese should calculate a pregnancy start date as a birthday and age increase point. At the very least, a virtual age should not refer to the period from birth to Chinese New Year's Eve, that is, it should not be as short as less than a day or as long as a year, but should use the birthday as an age increase point, which can also be roughly logical.

According to this theory, "In ancient times, it was believed that a new life had begun after pregnancy, and the age at the time of birth was counted as one year, so it can be considered that the imaginary age was counted from the beginning of conception (the exact time of pregnancy is not calculated, and the birth is always counted as one year old)." However, the ancients used to take birth as the starting point of life, and the modern scientific concept takes conception as the starting point of life.

In this respect, there is no difference between East and West. The ancient Chinese attached great importance to each unit of time such as the year, month, day and hour of birth, and attached great importance to the "eight characters of birth", which shows that the ancient Chinese took birth as the starting point of life. In fact, the reason why Chinese do not consider the date of birth when calculating age is that we consider the order of years and not the time span.

The lunar calendar used in ancient China (actually a lunisolar calendar, not a lunar calendar) arranged each month according to the moon's phase cycle, but combined with the year calculated by referring to the position of the sun, there will be a leap month due to the adjustment of the time error. But the ancients did not celebrate two birthdays in the same year. In addition, the ancient calendar will also be adjusted in terms of counting days due to special circumstances such as the change of dynasty and the accession of the new emperor, so "heavy year does not repeat day" is the biggest feature of the virtual year algorithm.

The ancient Chinese attached great importance to the concept of "birthday" composed of year, month, day, and hour (such as the eight characters of birth), while Westerners valued the concept of "birthday" composed of month and day. In terms of ageing, the ancient Chinese considered the order of the years being experienced, while the Westerners considered the length of time that had elapsed. In addition, the Chinese and Western calendars are different, so the age rules of imaginary years and years are completely different.