Chinese Calendar
It is rather confusing to use the Chinese calendar as they use not one, but two calendars- a Lunar and a Solar Calendar. The reason for this is that the Solar Calendar, as used by the western civilization, does not have an even number of days. Therefore there is a leap year after every four years. The ancient Chinese were able to overcome this by blending both the calendars and using them in various forms of astronomy. Since the Chinese astrology uses the Lunar calendar, they have the Chinese New Years on different days of every year. However, most of the Feng Shui astrology uses the solar calendar. The names if the Chinese years, months and days are based on an ancient Chinese system of Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches. All the days and months are associated with the 12 Earthly Branches and 10 Heavenly Stems. According to the lunar calendar, the Chinese New Year falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice, which is the 11th month of the year.
The Chinese calendar never ends or starts on the same date consecutively. The Chinese calendar has centuries just like the Gregorian calendar but they are sixty years long. According to the Chinese calendar, the 78th century had begun on 2nd February 1984 and the next century will start 60 years later, in 2044.
In Chinese astrology, the 60 year period is of high importance. The 8th such period began in the February of 2004. According to this concept, the popular Feng Shui books that gave guidelines related to auspicious circumstances in the 7th period were outdated.
In the Chinese tradition, the Solar Calendar is called the Hsia calendar which is used by farmers because of the fact that the Sun rules all the seasons that are of utmost concern to them. In the Solar Calendar, the entire year is broken down into 24 mini seasons.
All these facts indicate that the Chinese used quite complex but accurate system of calendars, which was only possible because they had a strong understanding of astrology.