Remarkable Accuracy of Chinese Solar Calenda Early and Artistic Interest in Insects By Armur po To-day is the Ching Che or "Day of Excited Insects," according to the Chinese farmers' solar calendar. This divides the year into 24 fifteen or sixteen day periods, each period marked at its beginning by a special day, It very frequently happens that these days actually coincide with a distinct change in the weather as indicated by their names, which has led foreigners in China to remark upon {he accuracy of the Chinese calendar.
Unfortunately there exists considerable confusion in the minds of many Westerners in regard to the Chinese system of chronology. They do not realize that these people have two distinct calendars, one the lunar calendar, based on the movements of the moon, the other, a solar calendar, based on the apparent movements of the sun. The former is, or was, the One by which they kept track of ihe days of the month and the months of the year. Naturally it did not coincide exactly with the solar Year upon which the Gregorian Calendar of the West is based, and so varied widely and very confuse ingly with the latter. In order to make it agree approximately with the solar year, it was necessary to introduce ' intercalary months at stated intervals, be that sometimes there would be two 6th Moons. design derived from the cicada, which, by its extreme conventionalization, indicates that it was even then an old art-motif and, like all Shang art, probably had been handed down from the preceding Hsia period, of which there is now no other trace.
From these early days of China's culture all down through th cages, insects have formed a strong motif in the art of the country, and we know how important economically was at least one species—the silkworm, the valuable product of whose body led to China's contact with the Romans in the Han period (206 B.C.—220 A.D.) and the opening of a great overland trade route through Central Asia. It should be noted, however, that silk was known and extensively used in the Shang Dynasty fifteen centuries before this. In Shang writing there are pictographs of the silkworm, end on clay moulds excavated from tombs of this period the imprint of woven silk fabrics may still be seen.
Especially did the cicada seem to appeal to the Ancient Chinese. It is believed by some that they associated it with the idea of resurrection from the grave, for which reason they placed a jade carving of this insect in the mouths of the deceased at burial.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.