First day of the Lunar New Year, Xin Chou (辛丑) - the year of the Ox

Hong Kong stamp 1973 - Year of the Ox

According to the Chinese Lunar calendar, to-day is the first day of the Year of the Ox: the year of xin chou (辛丑), may I wish my readers a happy and prosperous new Year of the OX. The above photo is memorial stamps issued in Hong Kong in 1973, the year of gui chou (癸丑) to celebrate the Year of the Ox 48 years ago. Time flies. Those stamps were bought by me to send letters. The unused ones were left behind at the bottom of my desk drawer and now become part of my stamp collection.

In China Lunar calendar, a traditional way of counting years is to associate them with a 60-year cycle. It is formed by combining two sets of counters. One is called 10 stems (十干) and the other is 12 branches (十二支).  In total 60 names of the year are made by combining one stems (干) with one branch(支) in sequence, known as the stem-branch (干支) cycle. It is a system for counting and naming the lunar years and it forms a pool of 60 names for 60 years in sequence. jia zi (甲子) is the first year in this 60-year name pool while xin chou 癸丑and gui chou 辛丑are two names from this pool. That means the name of a particular year will repeat itself once every 60 years. Stem (干)  is also known as tian gan (天干) while branch (支) is called dizhi (地支).

On top of that, about branches, 12 animal icons (生肖) are used to represent the individual twelve branches (十二支). To take the year 1973 as an example, it is the Year of the Ox, so after a twelve years period in 1985, 1997, 2009 and 2021 will also be the Year of the Ox. Each one of these 12 animals will repeat itself in a 12-year cycle. Besides ox, there are the mouse, tiger and dragon etc. Therefore, it can be said that the time concept in traditional China is repeating cycles while the western concept is linear.

In Hong Kong, with the National Security Law recently being put in place in 2020, many things have changed.  The pre-1997 days have become more memorable to me now. In particular the years beginning from the 1970s, Hong Kong gradually became one of the Asia Four Dragons in Asia. The small crown icon at the top right corner of the above stamp symbolizes a relatively free and open governance under the British rule.

 

The Tiangan and Dizhi table

The Ganzhi cycle (note no. 38 and no.50)

Reference

Chinese History – A manual by Endymion Wilkinson, published by Harvard University Asia Center in 2000