Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2015

 

From “Counting from the End of the Year” to “Counting from the Beginning of the Year”: Evolution of the Official Method of Counting Age in Middle Antiquity in China

(Abstract)

 

Zhang Rongqiang

 

In ancient China, particularly in middle antiquity, the biggest difference between the official and the popular way of counting age lay in when one became a year older. From the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty at the latest, popular custom regarded the first day of the year, i.e. the lunar Spring Festival, as the point at which one was a year older. The government, on the other hand, in accordance with the design of the household registration system, used the standard time of household registration (i.e. the time when government officials registered the household) as the point at which the person concerned was a year older. In the “Biography of Cang Gong” (Chunyu Yi) in the Shi Ji (Records of the Grand Historian), Chunyu Yi states that he was 39 years old at the end of the 3rd Year of Emperor Wen of Han, and Qin bamboo slip No. 0552 at the Yuelu Academy records that Shuang was 23 years old by the end of the 26th Year of the First Emperor of Qin. These are all examples ages calculated by the official method. But since the standard registration time varied, the point of time officially used to add age increments also varied. During the Qin and Han dynasties, household registrations were compiled in August, so one officially became a year older in August. Under the Tang, the populace had to submit their “household information for the coming year” in advance, at the end of the year previous to the year in which the government would carry out household registration, so the standard registration time was actually the first month of the lunar year. From the Tang Dynasty at the latest, the official way of counting age was from the beginning of the lunar year, finally bringing together government institutions and folk custom.