About Chrysanthemum Calendar
Chrysanthemum Calendar is an English-language Tong Shu: a Chinese almanac for every day. For more than two thousand years, households in China have turned to the Tong Shu to choose the right day for the things they do. We made this calendar to keep that tradition in daily use and within reach of anyone, as a companion for living in step with the seasons.
This project is possible because of the work of many others: the old almanacs, James Legge’s 1882 translation of the Yijing, the source of our hexagram texts, and the teachers who have generously passed on what they know. We carry on their work with gratitude, and with goodwill toward all who walk this path.
Chrysanthemum Calendar is named for Double Nine Day, the ninth day of the ninth lunar month and the festival of the chrysanthemum. “Chrysanthemums show yellow flowers” is one of the almanac’s 72 small seasons, and in 2026 it begins on Double Nine itself, the day this site was launched: 18 October 2026.
The Tong Shu
Tong Shu means “the book that knows everything.” In Cantonese it is called Tong Sing, “all-winning,” because the word for book sounds like the word for losing. It is also called the Yellow Calendar. Its ancestor, the day book of the Qin dynasty, was already in use more than two thousand years ago.
An almanac does not tell your fortune. It describes the quality of each day: which activities its qi favors, and which it does not, so that what you do can go with the day rather than against it.
Sun + Moon
The Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar: it follows both lights. Its months begin at each new moon, and its year turns through the 24 solar terms, which follow the sun. Because twelve lunar months fall short of a solar year, a thirteenth, intercalary month is added about every three years, so the two stay in step. The character 明 (ming), bright, is the sun 日 (ri) and the moon 月 (yue) side by side.
Three Traditions
Watching the sky
Tian WenOmens for the realm from eclipses, comets, and gatherings of planets. Once a monopoly of the state.
Calculating fate
Ming LiA person’s life from the moment of birth, read in the four pillars and the Purple Star chart. Chrysanthemum Calendar calculates both.
Choosing days
Ze RiThe almanac: the quality of each day, for everyone. This is the heart of Chrysanthemum Calendar.
The Daily + the Lunar Hexagram
Daily
The 64 run in Fu Xi’s order, eight weeks of nine days, with one day in each week left without a hexagram. The count runs forward through one year of 360 days and backward through the next. Read the image.
Lunar
Each lunar month has five hexagrams, six days each, and each day of the six moves up one line, from the first at the bottom to the top. Read the line for the day.
Festivals + Observances
| Date | Event | Lunar date |
|---|
Glossary
Sources
The hexagram texts are adapted from Yi King, an English translation of the Yijing by James Legge, published in 1882 as volume 16 of The Sacred Books of the East. For this calendar they are written anew in present-day English, addressed to you, and checked line by line against the Chinese. For each hexagram there is the judgment, attributed to King Wen, and the six lines, attributed to the Duke of Zhou, with two of the oldest commentaries: the Image, and the Commentary on the Judgment, with its explanation of each line. The Chinese is the received text of the Zhouyi.
The officers follow the imperial almanac guide of 1739, the Xieji Bianfang Shu, and the mansions the verses of the almanac Yuxia Ji, in its edition of 1880. Everything else, from the lunar dates to the four pillars and the hexagrams of each day, is calculated by the calendar itself from the movements of the sun and moon.
The translation most often read in English is Richard Wilhelm’s, rendered from his German by Cary F. Baynes as The I Ching or Book of Changes, and found in nearly every bookstore. If you would like a contemporary translation of the Book of Changes, we recommend Liu Ming’s Changing: Zhouyi: The Heart of the Yijing, an excellent resource available from Da Yuan Circle.
Note These are listed as resources only. Chrysanthemum Calendar is not affiliated with Wikisource, the Internet Archive, Princeton University Press, or Da Yuan Circle.