China's Lunar Calendar 2014 03-31

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Calendars and Almanacs"  

⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦

LEFT April 3 ..................................March 31.......Monthly Calendar Information...RIGHT

This is one in a never-ending series—following the movements of the calendar—in Round and Square perpetuity. It is today's date in the Chinese lunar calendar, along with basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying lunar calendars (and Chinese culture) for many years, you will likely find yourself asking "what does that mean?" I would caution that "it" doesn't "mean" any one thing. There are clusters of meaning, and they require patience, reflection, careful reading, and, well, a little bit of ethnographic fieldwork. The best place to start is the introduction to "Calendars and Almanacs" on this blog. I teach a semester-long course on this topic and, trust me, it takes a little bit of time to get used to the lunar calendar. Some of the material is readily accessible; some of it is impenetrable, even after many years. 

As time goes on, I will link all of the sections to lengthy background essays. This will take a while. In the meantime, take a look, read the introduction, and think about all of the questions that emerge from even a quick look at the calendar.

Section One
Solar Calendar Date
(top to bottom; right to left
卅三
一月

一期星

Third Month, Thirty-first Day

Astral Period One
Monday, March 31

———————————————— 

Section Two
Beneficent Stars 

(top to bottom, right to left)

生時敬鳳
氣陽安凰

Phoenix
Reverent Calm
Temporal Yang
Engendered Vapor

—————————————————

Section Three
Auspicious Hours
(top to bottom, right to left) 
申辰子

吉中凶

酉己丑
凶吉吉
戌午寅
中吉吉

亥未卯

吉凶吉

23:00-01:00 Inauspicious
01:00-03:00 Auspicious
03:00-05:00 Auspicious
05:00-07:00 Auspicious

07:00-09:00 In-Between
09:00-11:00 Auspicious
11:00-13:00 Auspicious
13:00-15:00 Inauspicious

15:00-17:00 Auspicious
17:00-19:00 Inauspicious
19:00-21:00 In-Between
21:00-23:00 Auspicious

The hours above are for Hong Kong. It is up to you if you want to recalibrate or to assume that the cyclicality of the calendar "covers" the rest of the world. This is a greater interpretive challenge than you might think.

————————————————— 

Section Four 
Activities to Avoid  
(top-to-bottom; right to left) 

忌
除動造合
服土酒醬

Mixing Sauces
Making Liquor
Moving Soil
Discarding Clothing

—————————————————  

 Section Five 
Cosmological Information 

初
一
辛
丑
土
危
開

First Day (Third Lunar Month)

Cyclical day: xinchou (38/60)

Phase (element): Earth

Constellation: Danger (12/28)

"Day Personality" Cycle: Open (11/12)

—————————————————  

Section Six
Appropriate Activities
(and Miscellaneous Information
(top-to-bottom; right to left)

宜
穿醫出祭
井病行祀
置修訂祈
產造婚福
作上理入
灶樑髮學
納開移會
畜渠徙友
電始
復地長牛
喪囊星口

Appropriate Activities

Venerating Ancestors
Inquiring-into Fortune
Entering Study
Meeting Friends
Going Out (and about)
Marriage Engagements
Patterning Hair
Moving Households
Physician Treatments
Repairing and Buildings
Putting-up Beams
Opening Sluices
Boring Wells
Setting-up Factories
Stove Work
Livestock Payments

First Lightning
(the twelfth of seventy-two five-day solar micro-periods on the agricultural calendar)

Miscellaneous Information

Ox Mouth

Long Star

Earth Duffel

Return Mourning————

 Section Seven

Inauspicious Stars 
(right to left) 
白 林
White, Copse
————

Section Eight
Miscellaneous Information 
(Top to bottom; right to left)
厠 灶 廚

Toilet, Stove, Kitchen

Ponder College (4)—Spring Break

Click here for the "Ponder College Resource Center"—(all posts available)
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Ponder College"
This is an "long post" (大)—click here for an explanation of Round and Square post lengths.

 ***  ***

One year ago on Round and Square 30 March 2013)—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 03-30
One year ago on Round and Square 30 March 2013)—Calendars and Almanacs (f)
Two years ago on Round and Square (30 March 2012): Just Do It Over: Pink Slime
Three years ago on Round and Square (30 March 2011)—Theory Corner: Introduction

[a] Ponder Break RF

It has been a studious week at Ponder College, my alma mater.

It always is. That's how we roll here.

Not much has actually been going on at the college this week. Pretty much everyone has cleared out and headed toward spring break destinations. Students, faculty, and staff are all encouraged to make the most of the week, and the college operates with a pared down, bare bones staff until things start up again. You see, we take autumn and spring breaks very seriously down here at Ponder College, and feel that it is just the slice of relaxation and, well, pondering that makes for healthy students, teachers, and staff members. Almost everyone goes somewhere.

[b] Somewhere RF

How is that possible?...I hear you ask...

Well, thanks to the generous donation of a very wise (and financially well-set) old scholar a few generations ago, there is a sizable endowment for spring break travel at Ponder College. This tends to make our spring break just a little bit different from the Daytona drunkfests that are common in the "literature" about spring break life. Students can apply for up to $2,000 each (this amount is often unnecessary) to go somewhere that will add richness and luster to their educational experiences. Almost as soon as autumn break (also a week) is over, students begin thinking about where they will go in the spring. Almost six months of pondering go into each of these little week-wedges in the otherwise relentless academic calendar.

There is only one rule. 

You have to take "a book."

[c] Golden RF

Yes, and you have to read it and write an essay. This is serious stuff at Ole Pond, and it has been going on since the late-1950s, through times of national introspection, anger, and even musical rebirth. A group of students from the Class of '71 proposed a sophomore trip to a New York farm that was going to sponsor "a few bands." Or so they heard. They planned to bring copies of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit with them to read amidst the tumult. Then they learned that this "dairy farm music" thing was actually going to happen in August, so they made backup plans (and still went to New York for Woodstock before the '69-70 academic year began—they brought the book, too).

Think about it, though. $2,000 to go anywhere for a week. At Ponder College, almost as much thought goes into "what shall I read" as "where shall I go?"

[d] Auckland RF

A gentle (but très sérieux) jockeying for literary position is a hallmark of the planning stages for these spring breaks. As early as November, students start plotting, planning, and negotiating. The reading choices flow from this learned confusion. Every year, a few students overreach, and are chided by both faculty and fellow students for failing to understand exactly what kinds of readings work in the context of what is really an eight-day break (effectively Saturday-Saturday). Just last year, Brandon Coakley '15 made the mistake not only of choosing Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, but the far more serious one of proclaiming it loudly to all who would listen. He returned from break bent, haggard, and utterly broken in spirit, having failed even to notice the lush Ozark vistas from his rugged little cabin. He just ate frozen pizzas and burritos, drank Coke Zero, and stared at incomprehensible pages.

This year, he has chosen Henry James's The Golden Bowl. He is going back to the Ozark cabin he never left last year, and plans to take a few walks. He has learned something about eight days of learning and reflection.

[e] Winding Down RF

And that is the point of the "break." To learn. To grow. To visit other places. The more trendy among our students and faculty call this "experiential" learning. Galen Grimsrud, Edmund Leach Distinguished Professor of Ethnographic Inquiry, scoffs at this term. "Experiential? That is what learning is. Give me a notebook, a great work of literature, and a setting where I can talk, ask questions, reflect, read, and write...and I'll call that 'learning.' What need have we to add silly little modifiers?"

***  ***

So off they went last Saturday—to the far corners of North and Central America, as well as various corners of the globe. It's tricky, though. Think of New Zealand. Traveling for the better part of three days (not counting time lost to jet lag) is not always the best way to spend an eight-day break that is meant for relaxing, reading, thinking, and experiential learning. The funding committee is usually quite generous in its appraisal of these ventures, knowing that the best way to learn from gnawing off too large an itinerary is to have a few overly ambitious souls do so...and then speak loudly enough upon return about their flawed plans to etch it into the Ponder College spring break mythology.

So, rather than Auckland, a group of junior history majors decided to retrace Alexis de Tocqueville's journey across the territory we know today as "Michigan." They read the accompanying essay in the back of the Penguin Classics edition of Democracy in America, and thought about the Michigan frontier (and immensely dense forests) back in the 1830s. It was just about the perfect balance of reading, traveling, and reflection. Just right—like baby bear (and they saw a few of those, too).

[f] Paleozoic RF

 ***  ***

Faculty members have access to the fund pool, too, and often make action-packed trips to the areas in which their research and teaching is based. This spring, Jeremy Baustian, Associate Professor of Arabic and Swahili, made a whirlwind (and, as he notes, utterly exhausting) trip to Kenya and Tanzania to look at the East African sources of travel for an unlikely explorer from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a century ago. "He started the trip in Mombasa, and crossed the heart of central Africa—all without knowing really a word of any relevant African language. He was a strange man." Professor Baustian brought that traveler's 1904 book A Yankee in Pigmy Land with him, and winced repeatedly at the confident colonialism of yester-century.

Chris Chrislie checked himself into an anger management clinic. "If I don't get this anger thing under control," he muttered to no one in particular, "I'll never be a dean." He brought the Daodejing with him, and pondered messages of flowing with the Way.

[g] Journey RF

Even President Andrea Blume took a trip—almost like a mini-sabbatical in a swirling calendar of fundraising. She went to Vancouver Island, and brought a copy of Rousseau's Second Discourse with her. "There is no direct relationship between my chosen location and the book I read," she cautioned. "I learned early in my presidency that you can overthink these things, and get too "cute" with the relationship between observation and travel, on the one hand, and reading, on the other. I usually pick a book and a location almost (and that almost is key here) independently of each other."

But students enjoy these trips as much as anyone. Indeed, seniors have worked the breaks down to an art form. No longer trapped in the vise of surreptitious alcohol consumption, they apply themselves to creating the perfect spring break capstone. This year, a large group of anthropology majors read both Genesis and Darwin's Origin of the Species. And they visited the Creation Museum in Kentucky. "This trip was about learning...asking questions, listening," said recently returned Katrina Schuman '14. "It might seem that we had an 'agenda,' but we (emphatically) did not. We just wanted to think about key areas of disagreement in our society. We watched, we listened, we read, and we learned. That's all."

[h] Scuba RF

So think about it. Eight breaks—one in the middle of each of the eight semesters. Eight "books" (we'll talk more about that as autumn break approaches next October). Eight trips. As a unit, they form one of the most distinctive (and appealing) aspects of a Ponder College education, and the fund is continually replenished and expanded as alumni who have valued their own experiences give back to the college.

And now—today—it is over.

Everyone is filtering back and, by Sunday night, each student will be starting preparations for Monday classes, post-midterm papers, and the inexorable march toward finals. No one can ever take that trip away, though, and dreams of the next one will begin almost immediately.

NEXT
Sunday, 7 April 2014
Ponder College (5)—One Wheel, One Dream
A Ponder College education only looks like it is "skewed" towards academics to outsiders who do not understand. From the top down (and "bottom" up), Ponder faculty, staff, and students reject this categorization.

[i] Twilight RF

China's Lunar Calendar 2014 03-30

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Calendars and Almanacs"  

⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦

LEFT March 30.........................................................................................................March 23 RIGHT

This is one in a never-ending series—following the movements of the calendar—in Round and Square perpetuity. It is today's date in the Chinese lunar calendar, along with basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying lunar calendars (and Chinese culture) for many years, you will likely find yourself asking "what does that mean?" I would caution that "it" doesn't "mean" any one thing. There are clusters of meaning, and they require patience, reflection, careful reading, and, well, a little bit of ethnographic fieldwork. The best place to start is the introduction to "Calendars and Almanacs" on this blog. I teach a semester-long course on this topic and, trust me, it takes a little bit of time to get used to the lunar calendar. Some of the material is readily accessible; some of it is impenetrable, even after many years. 

As time goes on, I will link all of the sections to lengthy background essays. This will take a while. In the meantime, take a look, read the introduction, and think about all of the questions that emerge from even a quick look at the calendar.

Section One
Solar Calendar Date
(top to bottom; right to left
三
十

日期星

Third Month, Thirtieth Day

Astral Period Sun
Sunday, March 30

———————————————— 

Section Two
Beneficent Stars 

(top to bottom, right to left)

月母
空倉

Maternal Granary
Lunar Vacancy

—————————————————

Section Three
Auspicious Hours
(top to bottom, right to left) 
申辰子

吉中凶

酉己丑
凶中吉
戌午寅
凶凶中

亥未卯

中吉中

23:00-01:00 Inauspicious
01:00-03:00 Auspicious
03:00-05:00 In-Between
05:00-07:00 In-Between

07:00-09:00 In-Between
09:00-11:00 In-Between
11:00-13:00 Inauspicious
13:00-15:00 Auspicious

15:00-17:00 Auspicious
17:00-19:00 Inauspicious
19:00-21:00 Inauspicious
21:00-23:00 In-Between

The hours above are for Hong Kong. It is up to you if you want to recalibrate or to assume that the cyclicality of the calendar "covers" the rest of the world. This is a greater interpretive challenge than you might think.

————————————————— 

Section Four 
Activities to Avoid  
(top-to-bottom; right to left) 

忌
問結
卜綱

Binding Nets
Divinatory Questions

—————————————————  

 Section Five 
Cosmological Information 

三
十
庚
子
土
虛
收

Thirtieth Day (Second Lunar Month)

Cyclical day: gengzi (37/60)

Phase (element): Earth

Constellation: Void (11/28)

"Day Personality" Cycle: Receive (10/12)

—————————————————  

Section Six
Appropriate Activities
(and Miscellaneous Information
(top-to-bottom; right to left)

宜
拆
卸
掃
舍
火歲
星破
班水
煞痕

Appropriate Activities

Unloading and Unhitching
Sweeping Rooms

Miscellaneous Information

 Generational Destruction
Water Scar
Fire Star
Classified Balefulness
————

 Section Seven

Inauspicious Stars 
(right to left) 
白 天
White, Heaven
————

Section Eight
Miscellaneous Information 
(Top to bottom; right to left)
占
磨 碓

Divination
Mortar, Pestle