Yiyou

Today is the first day of the Chinese New Year, 4703. It's interesting how many societies/cultures throughout history have followed a lunar calendar, instead of a solar one. The Hebrew calendar is also lunar, although like the Chinese they use our Western Gregorian calendar for secular purposes.

Calendars are fascinating things. For me, it always prompts thoughts along the lines of "How do we *really* measure time, anyway?" Tools that we use to measure time and its passage such as clocks and calendars are of human construction. Sundials are ancient, but for millions of humans in the past, the sun itself marked the passage of time. Somehow I doubt some serf or peon out in the field had a sundial right next to him. "Yep, yep, big shadow on the twelve. It's lunchtime." Once upon a time and long ago, there was just day and night, and the passage of time. At some point, humans crafted artificial divisions that locked things into a nice tidy package: the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Many of our present-day calendars stem from religion, and I'd bet a lot of ancient calendars and divisions of time also developed due to religion, politics, or business.

The present Chinese year is 4703-- apparently the counting originates with the development of the current lunar calendar under Shih Huang-Ti, the First Emperor, the ruthless ruler who united China as one nation. The Hebrew calendar originated with the Creation, and the present year, 5765, is dated from the sixth day of Creation, when Adam was given life. The Islamic lunar calendar has both religious and historical antecedents: Muslims count from the time of the Hegira, Muhammad's flight from Mecca to Medina in the year 622 AD. The present-day Gregorian calendar was first instituted in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII as a correction to the Julian calendar. But in Rome, they dated their years from the founding of Rome, in 753 BC. Even the markers I've been using, "A.D." and "B.C." are of Christian roots.

So what year is it really? Given the battles between evolutionists and creationists, the varied calendars in use, and individual egocentrism, we'll probably never really know. How do you date it anyway? Which point in time do you fix as the beginning of THE calendar? The beginning of our present species? The first settlements, when humanity began to abandon nomadism for a more settled agricultural life? The beginning of writing systems, and recorded history?

I know it'd leave Asian nations/cultures out, but one step towards some resolution of all the conflicts going on in the world these days might be to devise a new calendar of sorts that could be used by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Let's look at it this way: all three religions consider the Old Testament holy, and all three religions view Abraham as an essential part of their religious heritage, especially the Jews and the Muslims. Why not devise a new calendar that dates from a key point in Abraham's life?

It'll probably never happen, sure, but it's worth a thought.

As for Chinese New Year, pretty soon it'll be time for me to leave for dinner- Chinese, of course! *grin* Chinese New Year is one of those abstract holidays that don't mean a whole lot to me, but it's fun to celebrate anyway. A few years ago, I did get a chance to participate to a degree in the festivities. I went to San Francisco, one of my favorite cities, to view the Chinese New Year parade. It starts on Market Street, winds its way down to Grant, up Grant, and then onto some other street and so forth. I've forgotten the exact route. I know the parade ends just to the east of Portsmouth Square. It takes about four or so hours for the entire parade to go from start to finish. It was fun, and different, especially since there were not just one, but several lion dancers, and the lions were different. Some were really long and required lots of handlers underneath to control the body, while others were smaller, maybe just a lion head and a brief tail, with just two or three people needed. There's some floats, local politicians (was kind of hard to see Willie Brown, but I did see him), and tons and tons of firecrackers. They are LOUD. We picked a spot that was reasonably close to the beginning of the parade, and as soon as the last participant passed, we dashed back to Chinatown to my favorite Chinese restaurant for dinner. We ended up waiting 45 minutes for a table, but we were lucky. I lipread the host telling later potential diners that the wait was currently up to 90 minutes! Wow!

Since I grew up an hour northeast of SF, taking friends and visitors there was fairly common. After all, there isn't all that much to do in the Central Valley. It's nice-- the mountains are an hour away, SF is an hour away... *grin* Chinatown is always a must stop on the tour. It's not the largest in the U.S. anymore (I believe NYC's Chinatown now takes the prize), but it's definitely another world in its own way. It's large and varied enough there that there are still residents who do not speak a word of English, but are perfectly comfortable speaking Chinese. I like to go really early in the morning when possible, and watch the locals and shopkeepers interact. If you're lucky, you can see poultry and seafood prepared fresh for that night's meal. Once I saw a fish that had just had its head cut off, and the inside of the fish was still pulsing. It's definitely different from the more sterile climate of your local supermarket!

Now I'm hungry...