China's Lunar Calendar 2018 08-31

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

⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦
9/1.................................................................................................................8/25

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-solar (or "luni-solar" calendar; I call it the "lunar" calendar in order to distinguish it from the kinds of calendars most Westerners use. It has a basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying 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. You will likely find that several of the translations seem quite "fanciful" in English. I am simply trying to convey that they also sound fairly fanciful in Chinese.

Section One

Solar Calendar Date
卅
一

五期星

Eighth Month, Thirty-First Day  
Friday, August 31

————

Beneficent Stars 

(top to bottom, right to left)

不玉母
將堂倉

Maternal Granary
Jade Palace
Not General

Section Three
Auspicious Hours
(top to bottom, right to left) 
申辰子
吉凶吉
酉巳丑
吉凶凶
戌午寅
吉中凶

亥未卯
吉中吉

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

07:00-09:00 Inauspicious
9:00-11:00 Inauspicious
11:00-13:00 In-Between
13:00-15:00 In-Between

15:00-17:00 Auspicious
17:00-19:00 In-Between
19:00-21:00 Auspicious
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
針時栽
灸插種

Planting and Cultivating
Timely Injections
Acupuncture and Moxibustion

 ————

Section Five 
Cosmological Information

廿
一
乙
未
金
亢
閉

Twenty-First Day (Seventh Lunar Month)

Cyclical day: yiwei (32/60)

Phase (element): Metal
"Constellation Personality" Cycle: Neck (2/28)
"Day Personality" Cycle: Closed (12/12)

————

Section Six

Appropriate Activities

and Miscellaneous Information  

(top-to-bottom; right to left)

宜

作嫁祭
灶娶祀
補開出
塞市行
除動訂
服土婚
安上納
葬樑裁
虛五
月血羊
煞支口

 ————

Appropriate Activities
Venerating Ancestors
Going Out (and about)
Marriage Engagements
Grain Payments
Marriage Alliances
Opening Markets
Moving Soil
Raising Beams
Stove Work
Patching and Plugging
Discarding Clothing
Positioning Beds

Five Voids

Baleful Asterisms

Goat Mouth
Blood Branch
Lunar Balefulness

 ————

Section Seven

人 山

Person, Mountain
 ————

Section Eight 
Miscellaneous Activities

碓
厠 磨

Pestle
Toilet, Mortar

Historical Research Methods Letter Assignment, Autumn 2018

On this date on Round and Square's History 

30 August 2015—China's Lunar Calendar 2015 08-29
30 August 2015—New York Review of Books Questions: Autumn 2015
30 August 2014—China's Lunar Calendar 2014 08-29
30 August 2014—New York Review of Books Questions: Autumn 2014
30 August 2013—China's Lunar Calendar 2013 08-29

30 August 2013—Syllabic Cycles: Mountains Syllabus (b)

30 August 2012—The New Yorker and the World: Course Description (h)

30 August 2011—Annals of Ostracism: Discovered Notes

[a] Text and illustration RF

Historical Research Methods

History 210

Autumn 2018

Preliminary Writing Assignment 

Research: The Letter

By choosing the letter format for your first writing assignment, I am asking you to build upon the skills you have already begun to develop in analyzing (and providing examples for) research materials. You have already reached a point where you have some experience with “research,” and your job will be to explain it to an intelligent non-specialist.

[b] Reaching, teaching RF

Teach it, really.

Letters from “the field” (or our modified “archive” of research works on the syllabus) are a good way to refine your thoughts about historical research, and they are a useful medium for beginning the intellectual “framing process” that will accelerate as we move through the next two-thirds of the course. The letter writing exercise is especially useful while studying research materials. 

The nonfiction writer John McPhee explains to his students that a letter is often precisely the solution to problems of interpretation or clarity—when in doubt, write to mother, he says. In this case, it is not a plea of “send money” that the letter contains, but a reworking, rethinking, and contextualization of your work. You need not limit yourself to kinfolk, but you need to think about who the recipient will be (ideally someone who will welcome a letter about “doing theory”).

It needs to be a real letter to a real reader. Do not treat this assignment as an "exercise." Your letter will be mailed through the Beloit College history department and sent to your reader.

You owe it to yourself to listen to this long interview with McPhee (but I know that you are pressed for time). At the very least, though, listen to the first few minutes. It is the very purpose that lies behind this assignment.

John McPhee NPR (1978) 22:40
Click on the second blue circle on the right side of the page (it is worth it)

Now start writing. Toward that end, you should pay attention to the following issues.

1. The letter needs to be “long enough” to get you deeply into several issues regarding social and cultural theory, including particular approaches and a few examples.  There is no absolute upper limit, but I am going to make an absolute lower limit of 2,000 words (about six pages). Realistically, your letter should probably be somewhere in the 3,000 word range (about ten pages). 2,000 words (about six pages) is the bare minimum, and you are unlikely to receive an "A" for it. The letter requires detail, and that usually requires 2,500 or 3,000 words, with solid examples (including quotations) from your texts. 

Do not, under any circumstances, turn in an assignment shorter than 2,000 words.

[c] I said, "start writing" RF

2. I am asking you to connect with a very specific reader, and to explain “historical research methods” in a level of detail that she will find satisfying. You are the expert, and your “audience” is the person who will be reading your letter (think of my role as reading over her shoulder). I have found that this kind of assignment helps students to explain even abstruse matters, because the personal relationship they have with their readers demands an attention to patient explanation that is often lacking in more “academic” forms of writing, in which they assume that a professor already knows what they are writing about.

Your reader probably doesn't. 

Make it make sense.

3. You may approach your materials from any angle that you like, but you will need to “cover” at least the following items, no matter what order you choose.

          a. You must discuss the “what is research?” question. Provide your reader with 

              at least a few ways of thinking about it. Use examples from texts you have 
              noticed in the Geil archive.

          b. To some extent (you may choose to emphasize this matter or just treat it lightly),   
               you must introduce William Edgar Geil (1865-1925). It is entirely your decision 
               how you do so, however. You certainly have plenty to discuss about Geil, but 
               this letter need not be a "biography" of him.

          c. Give your reader a sense of what you have learned up to this point about 

              how to "do" research, using the Geil archive. Use examples, either from the 
              course or your own work.

          d. Finally, give your reader some sense of what it is like to “learn to do research” by 

              discussing the details of some of our texts. Think about your possible research 
              proposal project. Explain it to your reader.

          e. You must have at least one illustration. Think about "the rhetorical role of 
               illustrations" in the New York Review of Books.

[d] Evocation RF

4. The best way to approach the writing process is in three parts (this is a friendly suggestion). First, jot down some notes for each of the “sections” of your letter. Second, using those notes as a guide, write a rough draft of the whole letter. Third, revise, polish, and refine.  

Voilà you will have something not unlike what Alexis de Tocqueville might have written about understanding a complex, foreign culture that baffled and enticed him 180 years ago. While your letter won’t be as long as Democracy in America, it is likely—if it is done well—to be much like Tocqueville’s rich and evocative letters back to his family about encountering people, texts, and institutions in a strange land called the United States. 

You get the idea. If you don't, just raise your hand and ask me (or send me an e-mail message). I'll be happy to help.

***  ***

Letters are Due (as stapled hard-copies outside my office, MI 206)

by 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 30.

Add the word count and your box number to all papers!

[e] And then you may rest RF

China's Lunar Calendar 2018 08-30

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

⇦⇦⇦⇦⇦ From right to left: ⇦⇦⇦⇦
9/1.................................................................................................................8/25

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-solar (or "luni-solar" calendar; I call it the "lunar" calendar in order to distinguish it from the kinds of calendars most Westerners use. It has a basic translation and minimal interpretation. Unless you have been studying 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. You will likely find that several of the translations seem quite "fanciful" in English. I am simply trying to convey that they also sound fairly fanciful in Chinese.

Section One

Solar Calendar Date
三
十

四期星

Eighth Month, Thirtieth Day  
Thursday, August 30

————

Beneficent Stars 

(top to bottom, right to left)

不進生
將神氣

Engendered Vapor
Entering Spirits
Not General

Section Three
Auspicious Hours
(top to bottom, right to left) 
申辰子
中凶凶
酉巳丑
中吉吉
戌午寅
中凶凶

亥未卯
中吉中

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

07:00-09:00 Inauspicious
9:00-11:00 In-Between
11:00-13:00 Inauspicious
13:00-15:00 Auspicious

15:00-17:00 In-Between
17:00-19:00 Auspicious
19:00-21:00 In-Between
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
除苫開
福蓋倉

Opening Granaries
Thatched Coverings
Discarding Clothing

 ————

Section Five 
Cosmological Information

二
十
甲
午
金
角
開

Twentieth Day (Seventh Lunar Month)

Cyclical day: jiawu (31/60)

Phase (element): Metal
"Constellation Personality" Cycle: Establish (21/28)
"Day Personality" Cycle: Open (11/12)

————

Section Six

Appropriate Activities

and Miscellaneous Information  

(top-to-bottom; right to left)

宜

修出祭
造行祀
動嫁祈
土娶福
開立入
渠約學
牧交會
養易友
喪復
天班小
 火煞亡空

 ————

Appropriate Activities
Venerating Ancestors
Inquiring-into Fortune
Entering Study

Meeting Friends

Going Out (and about)

Marriage Alliances

Making Appointments

Trade and Commerce

Repairing and Constructing

Opening Sluices

Raising Livestock

Repeat Mourning

Baleful Asterisms

Small Loss-Void
Classified Balefulness
Heavenly Fire

 ————

Section Seven

白 火

White, Fire
 ————

Section Eight 
Miscellaneous Activities

占
碓 門

Divination
Pestle, Gate