Perpetual Chinese Calendar

LunarCal User's Guide - Gregorian - Chinese Date Conversion

Converting between Gregorian and Lunar Dates

Converting Lunar date to Gregorian date.

Converting Gregorian date to Lunar date

The program now supports conversion of dates between Gregorian and Lunar calendars. To bring up the calculator screen - Right Click->Chinese->Convert Date - Gregorian to/from Lunar Date" and the calculator will popup. Don't forget to click on the "Information" button to view notes on the accuracy of the conversion.

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Date Conversion in LunarCal (Manual method - Deprecated)

The main screen shows the current Chinese lunar month. It shows day 1 thru the last day of the lunar month which may be 29 (small month) or 30 (big month) days. The Gregorian calendar equivalent to the lunar month is also shown. Usually a lunar month will span two Gregorian months. Sometimes it will fall into one Gregorian month.

Intrepreting the LunarCal Screen

The first row shows the Chinese date. In the case below it reads figuratively: 1990 year, 7 month big, metal horse. In the correct context it reads: Year 1990 lunar month 7 (big month) cycle of the water-horse.

The left column that Aug 1990 and Sep 1990 is the Gregorian month days corresponding to the particular lunar month. The digits 20, 21, .... 18 is the Gregorian date. The lunar month 7, 1990 spans August 20, 1990 (1st day) thru September 18, 1990 (last day). September 19 is not shown as it falls into the next lunar month 8. Similarly, August 19 is not displayed as it falls in lunar month 6.

The Chinese characters beside each Gregorian day is the Chinese day number of the lunar month. With this understanding you should be able to convert between Gregorian and Chinese dates. You may also like to refer to the features page and the meaning of Chinese Characters of user's guide .

The above is a screenshot of lunar month 7, 1990. This lunar month spans the Gregorian months of August and September. It is very straight forward to convert between Gregorian and Chinese dates. It only takes a few keystrokes.

Converting Gregorian to Chinese Date

You need to be familiar with LunarCal's keystroke or the right mouse click to popup a menu. Please read the User's Guide from the beginning.

While looking at the left side of the screen, pageup/pagedn until you see the Gregorian year / month for which you require the Chinese date equivalent. Looking at above screen, we have Gregorian months of August and September 1990 displayed. The centre of the screen comprises the Chinese dates. The top row in large letters denotes the current displayed Chinese lunar month. So September 13, 1990 gives the Chinese date of 25th day of the 7th lunar month of the year 1990.

Converting Chinese Date to Gregorian Date

To obtain the Gregorian date equivalent to a Chinese date, you have to pageup/pagedn while looking at the top row of the screen. From above, the Chinese date 1st day of the 7th lunar month, 1990 is equivalent to Gregorian date: August 20, 1990.