Date and Time in Chinese

Once you have mastered thenumbers 0 to 9 you are well on the way to telling the date and time in Chinese.

Day of month

Western Arabic numbers (0 to 9) are now used for the names of the days of the week and also the months (with a couple of exceptions). Before 1912 a differentsystem of characters was used and in the distant past China even had a ten day week.

Dip into history

Weekdays are simply the two characters for ‘weekday’ followed by the number of the day in the week.

The character forsun is an ancient pictogram, it is derived from a round circle with an all seeing eye in the middle. Following the simplifying convention for drawingcharacters this has become a box with the dot becoming a line. When combined with期qī the characters日期rì qī means ‘date’, a day in the year.

Thesun is a potent symbol, and is the embodiment of‘yang’ in nature. Associated with the east (from where it rises) and theemperor. Solar eclipses were important events, and were often seen as showing heaven’s displeasure at theemperor’s rule. The continuing importance of the sun in China can be appreciated from its place in the anthem associated with Chairman Mao ‘The East is red; the Sun rises➚’.

So the complete set of weekdays is:

There is an alternative way to give the weekdays.

So Monday can also be (and the rest of the week as before just by changing the day number):

Days and months in Chinese

Chinese numbers

China adopted the Gregorian / western calendar at the foundation of theRepublic of China on 1st January 1912 but it took many years before the traditionalChinese calendar fell out of use and it is still used to fix the date for manyfestivals. Days of the month used to be givendifferent names but are now expressed as Arabic numbers.

The character is derived from the shape of the crescentmoon on its side. The Chinese character for month is named aftermoon just as in English and all other cultures as a month is the lunar cycle. It is the opposite to sun in theyin-yang system. The moon is the epitome of ‘yin’ - cool and feminine. It symbolizes the empress rather than the emperor. The autumnMoon Festival is widely observed when many moon cakes are consumed.

The Chinese written character for ‘day’ is日rì but in speech the alternative号hào is used forday. The order for dates in Chinese is to give the year followed by month and then day.

Years

In the modern calendar, years are given asnumbers without the units for ‘thousands’, ‘hundreds’ and ‘tens’, the digits are just read out in turn with the addition of the character for ‘year’ after the complete number. In the dynastic past, years were recorded as thesexagesimal number year number within the emperor'sreign.

year :年 nián

Your browser does not support this audio element.Sounds like: start ofnyan (2^nd tone)
Originally the character was of a man carrying a sheaf of harvested corn - the culmination of a year of toil in the fields. Over the years the characternian for year has changed so the symbolism is not so easy to see. The年nián monster is the subject of the legend of the foundation of theSpring Festival (Chinese New Year).

All of China is in the sametimezone➚. It is 8 hours ahead of UCT (GMT).

Telling the Time in Chinese

Hours and minutes can be given as numbers as in English. All Chinese clocks show the time in Arabic numerals and it is written down this way too. However just as in English there are some special phrases for half hours, quarters and expressing time to the next hour. Originally the Chinese had twelve divisions of a day时辰 shí chen and the double hours were named after the twelveearthly branches. There was also an early system of dividing the day into 100 divisions of 14.4 minutes : a刻 kè but this has now changed to follow the worldwide convention of 15 minutes ‘quarter of an hour’.

The simplest way to give the time is as a decimal numberhours ‘.’minutes. Thedot character in Chinese isdiǎn, it is short for the full term点钟diǎn zhōngclock. The time is followed by the characterfēn to indicateminutes. If the context makes it clear that it is a time of day thenfen can be left out.

division; part :分 fēn

Your browser does not support this audio element.Sounds like:fun rather thanfen. (1^st tone)
The character is made up of two parts (divide andknife) both giving the idea of cutting and division.Fen is also used for the smallest division ofcurrency.

Here are some examples of times in Chinese.

One more little strange rule is needed, there are two forms of thenumber 2 :èr andliǎng. As two hours are considered acouple of hours rather than2 hours it is written withliǎng rather thanèr.

Next Festival

Friday 29^th August 2025
Chinese Valentine’s Day (Qīxìjié七夕节)

Time of Day in Chinese

The Chinese do not use the 24 hour clock, soafternoon,morning orevening is needed to give the time of day. These phrases include:

Full date and time

Here is an example putting together a full date and time. The order is always longest units first, and the time of day is put before the hours.

Vocabulary

Sound files kindly provided byshtooka.net➚ under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License.