Traditional Chinese timekeeping

Traditional Chinese timekeeping refers to the time standards for divisions of the day used in China until the introduction of the Shixian calendar in 1628 at the beginning of the Qing dynasty.

These are dawn (晨明), morning light (朏明), daybreak (旦明), early meal (早食; 蚤食), feast meal (宴食), before noon (隅中), noon (正中), short shadow (少还; 小還), evening (𫗦时; 餔時; 'evening mealtime'), long shadow (大还; 大還), high setting (高舂), lower setting(下舂), sunset (县东; 縣東), twilight (黄昏; 黃昏), rest time (定昏).

The system used between the Eastern Han and Ming dynasties comprised two standards to measure the time in a solar day.

Each shí (時; 时) was 1⁄12 of the time between one midnight and the next,[2] making it roughly double the modern hour.

This first shí traditionally occurred from 23:00 to 01:00 on the 24-hour clock, but was changed during the Song dynasty so that it fell from 00:00 to 02:00, with midnight at the beginning.

[2] Starting from the end of the Tang dynasty into the Song dynasty, each shí was divided in half, with the first half called the initial hour (初) and the second called the central hour (正).

In 1280, Guo Shoujing's Shòushí Calendar (授时曆) subdivided each fēn into 100 miǎo (秒).

The Mahāsāṃghika, translated into Chinese as the Móhēsēngzhī Lǜ (Taishō Tripiṭaka 1425) describes several units of time, including shùn or shùnqǐng (瞬頃; 'blink moment') and niàn.

The first gēng theoretically comes at sundown, but was standardized to fall at yǒu shí central 1 kè, or 19:12.

They are morning (朝); midmorning, (禺); noon, (中); afternoon (晡); and evening (夕).

[9] Diǎn (点; 點), or point, marked when the bell time signal was rung.

[citation needed] Each diǎn or point is 1⁄60 of a day, making them 0.4 hours, or 24 minutes, long.

[10] Chinese still uses characters from these systems to describe time, even though China has changed to the UTC standards of hours, minutes, and seconds.