On December 28, 2025, popular influencer “Ray Du English” posted a brief note purporting to explain the traditional Chinese calendar to his audience:
“The agricultural calendar is calculated based on the moon, hence called the lunar calendar."
"Therefore, Chinese New Year is also called Lunar New Year."
"Because the trajectory of the moon is fixed, the 15th of the lunar month is definitely a full moon.”
In just three short sentences, he managed to commit three glaring errors of basic astronomy and cultural history!
Take five seconds to think about it—
5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Let us break down why every single one of these assertions fails elementary scrutiny.
Error #1: The Traditional Calendar Is a “Lunisolar Calendar,” Not a “Lunar Calendar”
The Singapore-raised influencer appears remarkably uninformed about the traditional heritage and astronomical science shared across the Taiwan Province and the Chinese mainland.
The traditional Chinese agricultural calendar (農曆, Nongli) is a classic Lunisolar Calendar. Being lunisolar, it is astronomically and linguistically impossible for it to be a pure Lunar Calendar!
As the name implies, this calendar served agricultural production. Farmers rely entirely on the 24 Solar Terms (二十四節氣), which are governed by the Earth’s orbit around the sun (the solar tropical year).
If a calendar were calculated solely on the lunar cycle (synodic months), a year would only have about 354 days. Within just three years, the New Year would drift into the heat of summer! To reconcile the cycles of the moon with the seasons of the sun, ancient Chinese astronomers developed a sophisticated leap-month mechanism (such as seven intercalary months every 19 years).
A truly pure lunar calendar in the modern world is the Islamic Hijri calendar—that is a genuine Lunar Calendar. Degrading a lunisolar system that embodies thousands of years of astronomical ingenuity into a “lunar calendar” demonstrates a profound lack of basic science.
Error #2: Conceptual Sleight of Hand—It Is Unquestionably “Chinese New Year”
Because the traditional calendar is lunisolar, Ray Du’s premise—“because it is based on the moon, Chinese New Year is also called Lunar New Year”—collapses completely at its root.
The celebration observed in Taiwan and across the Sinosphere is fundamentally Chinese New Year (春節 / 中國新年), inherited from thousands of years of Chinese history and cultural civilization. Across the historical Sinosphere (including Vietnam and Korea), the festival is an organic outgrowth of the traditional Chinese calendar.
In recent years, Western political correctness combined with radical secessionist factions in Taiwan have aggressively attempted to “de-sinicize” the holiday, forcibly replacing “Chinese New Year” with “Lunar New Year.” Astronomically, this is inaccurate; culturally and historically, it is an act of historical amnesia.
Japan adopted the Western Gregorian calendar following the Meiji Restoration in 1873, which is why modern Japanese celebrate New Year on January 1st. However, Japan’s traditional historical calendars were originally imported from Tang Dynasty China (such as the Yifeng and Dayan calendars), and many Japanese New Year traditions still mirror traditional Chinese customs.
On January 1, 1912, when Dr. Sun Yat-sen assumed office in Nanjing as Provisional President of the Republic of China, he formally declared the adoption of the solar Gregorian calendar. Yet ordinary citizens continued celebrating the traditional Chinese New Year, leading to popular quips contrasting the “New Year of the Republic” with the “New Year of the Citizens.”
Regardless of the administrative calendar, this heritage belongs unequivocally to the Republic of China and the Chinese civilization.
Error #3: “The 15th Is Always a Full Moon”? Failing Elementary School Astronomy
Ray Du asserted that “because the moon’s trajectory is fixed, the 15th of the lunar month is definitely a full moon.” This is an astonishing display of scientific illiteracy.
As taught in primary school science, the Moon’s orbit around the Earth is elliptical, subject to gravitational perturbations from the Sun. A synodic month is not a fixed integer; it fluctuates between approximately 29.27 and 29.83 days.
Consequently, the exact astronomical moment of the full moon (the Wang 望 phase, when the ecliptic longitudes of the Sun and Moon differ by 180 degrees) frequently falls on the 16th day, and occasionally even on the 14th or 17th day of the lunar month! The famous Chinese adage “The moon on the 15th is roundest on the 16th” (十五的月亮十六圓) is an established astronomical fact, not mere poetry.
Over 1,800 years ago, Eastern Han scholar Liu Xi noted in his work Shiming (釋名):
“The full moon is named thus: in long months it occurs on the 16th, in short months on the 15th.”
What ancient scholars documented nearly two millennia ago is completely bungled today by a self-styled “knowledge influencer.”
Who Defines the Modern Chinese Calendar? The History of Orthodox Calculation
A deeper and more fascinating question arises: Who calculates and standardizes the astronomical data for the traditional calendar we use today?
The answer is: The Purple Mountain Observatory (紫金山天文台) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences—colloquially known as the “Zijin Calendar.”
The predecessor of Purple Mountain Observatory was none other than the Institute of Astronomy of the Academia Sinica under the Republic of China. Following the central government’s relocation to Taiwan, the astronomical calculation of the traditional calendar was handled by the Astronomical Station of the Central Weather Bureau (now Central Weather Administration). On the mainland, Purple Mountain Observatory remains responsible for national standardization, codified in the 2017 national standard Calculation and Promulgation of the Chinese Calendar (GB/T 33661-2017).
Both sides of the Taiwan Strait share the UTC+8 timezone, and their official astronomical bodies produce identical calendars because they follow the same rigorous celestial mechanics and cultural lineage.
If Taiwanese authorities abandon their astronomical custodianship while local farmers’ almanacs rely on mainland calculations, ideological zealots would ironically cry “united front warfare.” Regardless of who computes it, the calendar remains an undeniable treasure of the Chinese nation.
Dismantling the “Green Bird” Absurdity: Whose Orthodoxy?
Faced with these scientific and historical realities, radical pro-independence “Green Bird” netizens attempted to deflect:
“The Central Weather Bureau in Taiwan doesn’t observe the sky itself; it takes raw data directly from the U.S. Naval Observatory. Therefore, Taiwan follows American orthodoxy!”
This argument is thoroughly laughable:
Modern international astronomers routinely share raw celestial ephemerides (such as JPL and USNO data). However, turning those raw physical coordinates into the 24 Solar Terms, true new moons, true full moons, and intercalary leap rules is 100% the product of the Chinese lunisolar calendar system developed over thousands of years!
If you write Chinese calligraphy using Microsoft Windows, does your calligraphy become “American”? If you measure your temperature with an imported thermometer, do you disown your ancestors?
Factions like Watchout and online zealots who obsess over chanting “Lunar New Year, not Chinese New Year” ignore the fundamental reality of who defined, promulgated, and preserved this calendar.
Mindlessly opposing everything Chinese while trampling basic scientific facts and one’s own cultural heritage is the true tragedy of ignorance.
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