Nineteen Year Cycle
The Chinese lunar calendar and the Gregorian Calendar often sync up every 19 years (Metonic cycle). Most Chinese people notice that their Chinese and Western birthdays often fall on the same day on their 19th, 38th birthday and so on. However, a 19-year cycle with a certain set of intercalary months is only an approximation, so an almost identical pattern of intercalary months in subsequent cycles will eventually change after some multiple of 19 years to a quite different 19-year cycle.
Read more about this topic: Chinese Calendar
Famous quotes containing the words nineteen, year and/or cycle:
“Minerva House ... was “a finishing establishment for young ladies,” where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“In certain savage tribes in New Guinea, they put the old people up in the trees and shake them once a year in the spring; if they don’t fall out they let them live another year.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)