Happy New Year of the Fire Rooster

I’m about to astound you with a piece of knowledge that somehow evaded me til now, despite growing up in a Chinese family – the Chinese lunar calendar has a leap month! I know!!

It seems that lunar months are just 29 or 30 days long, shorter than the ones we use in the Gregorian calendar. So some years squeeze in a 13th month. In effect, the lunar calendar has a whole month added every 3 years or so. But its position in the year varies and, to add more confusion, the extra month has the same name as the previous one! No mere mortal can be bothered to calculate when it’s going to happen because it’s far too complicated, so we all just wait until the Chinese calendars are printed and released into the wild. In lunar leap years though, Chinese New Year tends to fall earlier than usual, in January rather than February.

28th January 2017 begins the year of the Rooster, the fire Rooster to be precise. Roosters are thought to be hard-working, resourceful, confident, active and like being centre of attention! If you were born in 2005, 1993, 1981, 1969, 1957, 1945, you are most probably a Rooster. More importantly though, 2017 also has a leap month which falls after June. So, whatever doesn’t go well in June you can have another go at in the following month – the ‘yun’ version of June (which loosely translates as enriched or nourished)!

Here’s wishing you a happy and enriching year of the fire Rooster!
Kung Hei Fat Choi
Mo and Dave (aptly aka The Cockburns)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.