The Chinese lunar calendar has 10 more days than the Gregorian calendar. What is the reason?

A strange thing happened in history. In the Wanli tenth year of the Ming Dynasty, ten days disappeared inexplicably. What was the reason for this? September 18th in 1582 should have been October 4th according to the Gregorian calendar, but on the next day, September 19th, the Gregorian calendar time suddenly became October 15th. There were a total of ten days from October 14th to October 14th. However, these 10 days disappeared in our Ming Dynasty history, leaving a blank. Regarding the ten days when he disappeared, some people even made up the legend that he was eaten by ghosts, otherwise there would be no explanation at all.

But did these ten days really disappear out of thin air? In fact, this is a difference caused by different calendars. During the Ming Dynasty, the entire world did not have a unified Gregorian calendar as it does today. The only common calendar was the Julian calendar. Let me briefly tell you what the Julian calendar is. It is a calendar implemented by the Roman Emperor Julian after listening to the advice of astronomers. According to the Julian calendar, the year will be divided into 12 months and divided into major periods. The month and the small month, the one with odd numbers belongs to the big month, and the one with even numbers belongs to the small month. The big month has 31 days and the small month has only 30 days. The two evolve alternately.

In addition, a leap month is also set up, and a leap year is set every four years. A special day is added to February in leap years. Its year is 365.25 days, which is only 0.0078 days different from the tropical year 365.2422 that we have accurately calculated today, which means that there is only one day of time error every 128 years.

The Julian calendar looks very close to today’s calendar, but there are still inevitable errors, and as time accumulates, this error will gradually be exposed, so this is from 46 BC The calendar that was implemented on February 1, 1582 was not abolished until the new calendar was re-implemented in 1582. As Pope Gregory XIII presided over the promotion of this calendar change, and the calendar was named after him: the Gregorian calendar, which is what we call the Gregorian calendar today, and it has been used to this day.

There is also a reason why Pope Gregory XIII promoted this calendar reform. With the accumulation of time errors, the important event of which day Jesus was "resurrected" has become a problem. We all know that the Julian calendar has a certain time error. This time difference was as long as 10 days from the day when the Julian calendar was implemented to the second half of the 16th century AD. For this reason, the then Pope Gregory decided to solve this problem, so he specially convened a meeting of astronomers to start discussions. Finally, he adopted a doctor's suggestion and changed October 5th in the original Julian calendar. October 15th in the Gregorian calendar. As a result, these ten days became a blank in history, not only in China, but also in the whole world, the dates were accelerated by ten days. In fact, the ten days that we talk about disappearing are not really disappearing, but are caused by errors accumulated over the years, and then the time is corrected within one day. Time does not really disappear.

After the Pope ordered to change the date, other Catholic countries under the rule of the Pope have followed suit and changed the date to show their submission to the rule of the Pope, such as Portugal, Italy and Spain. However, there are also some countries that are unwilling to change the date and defy orders to oppose the Pope. Most of these countries that are unwilling to change the date are some Protestant countries, such as Greece, the birthplace of the Renaissance. The British Empire and its affiliated colonies, known as the Empire on which the sun never sets, did not implement the Gregorian calendar until the middle of the 18th century, and also moved the date forward by ten days.

While other countries in the world have revised their dates, the lunar calendar adopted by China in the Ming Dynasty has been operating normally, so when other countries in the world disappeared for ten days, China actually did not disappeared, the Chinese lunar calendar still falls on September 19th, and can still be in line with the Western calendar. We should be deeply proud of the superiority of civilization formed by our country's unique calendar.