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From: djy@mtung.UUCP (DJ Yang)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: Re: Counting years
Message-ID: <766@mtung.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 29-Aug-86 13:36:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtung.766
Posted: Fri Aug 29 13:36:38 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 31-Aug-86 01:48:26 EDT
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> > Also, if anyone out there lives someplace where they don't/didn't use the
> > so-called "Common Era" (or "Christian Era") and would like to comment based
> > on experience, I'm sure we're all interested in hearing from you.
> 
> Japanese system is based on the tenure of the emperor. The current year
> is (I believe) Showa 61, But many people spoke of the date as 1985.
> 

In ancient China, they use the tenure of the emperor, too.  But, in addition
to that, they also use two more characters to identify it.  The first group
has 10 different characters and the second has 12 (which most of you might
heard of it -- that's the 12 animals [Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake,
Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Boar]).

So, they refer years as "ABC 12, the year of Dragon", or officially,
"ABC 12, the year of XY" where ABC is the name of the emperor and X is a
character from group 1 and Y from group 2.

There are 60 combinations in this method.  So with the year of the emperor
and the two characters, historian has very little problem in counting years
even in earlt history.

After the revolution to overturn Tsing dynasty, there is no more emperor,
so they count year as "the 75th year of the Republic of China", which is 1986,
the year of Tiger.