中國紀年4643, Chinese Year 4643

Now is the Chinese Year 4643 ( since the Zodiac System born), Named The Fire DOG.

Chinese Year System is Moon/Lunar Calendar System with Tian-Steam/Di-Branch Names ( that time there are no Number yet ).
The Chinese lunar calendar is the longest chronological record in human history, ( file ) dating from 2637 BC when the first cycle of the Zodiac was introduced. It has been over 4643 years to today.

Each day partied to 12 time-zone ( named by Branches ).
First Time-Zone start from current 11:00pm, called Zi, means " Original or Start ".
Each Month has 30 days. Each Leap Month has 29 days.
Each Year has 12 months. Every 3 years ( the 3rd year or the 4th year: difficulty in here ) has a Leap Year, which has 13 months with one Leap Month ( which has 29 days ).

Each 12 year is a internal circle.
Each year is named by a animal they knew.
First animal came the mouse, then the Ox, the Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. ( called The Di-Branch Sequences )

Each 60 year is Full Loop Circle ( 12 Branches x 5 Elements of the earth = 60 combination ).
Therefore, From the first day of the 61st year, all Time-Zone, Day, Month, and Year are fully repeated ...

Now we are in the 78th Full-Cycle, which started on February 1984 (Chinese 4621), and will end on February 2044 ( Chinese 4681) .

Since that time there are no number system in human knowledge base, Chinese calendar used the Stem-Branch system to count the days, months and years.

There are 10 Tian-Stems and 12 Di-Branches in this system.

The Stems (Tian: Sky) are named by the Yin-Yang and Five Elements (Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth):
The Stem sequence order is Yang Wood (Jian /1), Yin Wood (Yi /2), Yang Fire (Bing /3), Yin Fire (Ding /4), Yang Earth (Wu /5), Yin Earth (Ji /6), Yang Metal (Geng /7), Yin Metal (Xing /8), Yang Water (Ren /9) and Yin Water (Kui /10).

The Branches (Di: Earth) uses the animal names.
The Branch sequence order is Rat (Zi: Start /1), Cow (Chou: 2nd-Start /2), Tiger (Yin: 2nd /3), Rabbit (mao: 2nd-2nd /4), Dragon (Cheng: 3rd /5), Snake (Si: 2nd-3rd /6), Horse (Wu: 4th /7 ), Sheep (Wei: 2nd-4th /8 ), Monkey (Sheng: 5th /9), Rooster (You: 2nd-5th /10), Dog (Suo: 6th /11) and Pig (Hai: 2nd-6th /12).

Year 2006 is ( Bing/3 * Suo/11), where Bing/3 is Yang Fire (Male/Sunchine Hot) and Suo/11 is Dog, then 2006 is Male Fire Dog , the 23rd of the Stem-Branch in the full-circle system. Because Fire is with the color Red in the Five-Element system, Year 2006 is also called Red Dog year. Also, since Fire is hot, we can say 2006 is the year of Hot Dog.

By the way, some people use Yellow King's Celebration Day as the 1st day of the Chinese Year Sytem, then 2006 is the 4704th Chinese year. The Yellow King became king in 2698 B.C., therefore China will enter the 4704th year on February 4th, 2006.

In Here we use the Zodiac System's Birth Day as the 1st of the Chinese Year System, hope most scientists agree to ....