Date and time notation in Asia

The exception to this guideline is in Taiwan, where a separate calendar system is used, with years numbered to the founding of the Republic of China in 1912.

Another means to distinguish between the two systems is to place the terms Gōngyuán (公元, common era) and Mínguó (民國, Republic) before the year.

The day of the week is often appended to the date and commonly enclosed in parentheses, such as 2006年1月29日 (星期日).

Dates written in Hong Kong and Macau are often formatted in the DD.MM.YYYY style due to European influences.

Chinese characters that mean hour (时; 時; shí) and minute (分; fēn) are sometimes used instead of the standard colon, as in 19時45分; shíjiǔ shí sìshíwǔ fēn, literally "nineteen hours, forty-five minutes".

Zhōng (钟; 鐘), which literally means "clock", can be added to a time phrase, usually to mean on the hour (such as 7點鐘; qī diǎnzhōng, "7 o'clock [sharp]" which can also be spoken and written as 7時正/7時整) or a time period of minutes (such as 12分鐘; shí'èr fēnzhōng, "twelve minutes long").

Spoken Chinese predominantly uses the 12-hour system and follows the same concept as A.M. (上午; shàngwǔ) and P.M. (下午; xiàwǔ).

For example, 19:45 would be written as 下午7:45; xiàwǔ qī shí sìshíwǔ ("after noon seven hours forty-five") or 下午7點45分; xiàwǔ qī diǎn sìshíwǔ fēn ("after noon seven hours forty-five minutes").

A traditional Chinese unit of time, the kè (刻), was 1/96 of the 24-hour day, equivalent mathematically to 15 minutes and semantically to the English "quarter of an hour".

The number two, èr (二), takes the form of liǎng (兩) when followed by a measure word, in this case, diǎn (點).

Noon is shí èr diǎnzhōng (12點鐘; '12 o'clock'); zhèngwǔ (正午; 'midday'); or wǔshí (午時; 'wǔ hour').

When the relative hour is included, the unit must be preceded with the measure word 個 (pinyin: ge; Jyutping: go3).