How do you calculate the Chinese New Year? Twentieth day of the Twelveth Moon? What about intercalary years? How do you determine when an intercalary year occurs? Are moon dates (lunations) counted from New Moon (almost the Judeo-Islamic style) or Full Moon? Who decides the age of the moon? Is any particular meridan preferred? In any strict solar/lunar calendar assignment of dates to events (lunations, solstices or equinox) is dependent on the choice of meridan and defintion of the start of a day. Who decides these things for the Chinese calendar and how?
Thanks!
I apologize that I'm no scholar in this field (my area is more electrical engineering and history), but my personal observations run like this:
1) Each month starts with the new moon: full moon is always 15th of the month.
2) The most important special day is the winter solstice: it always falls on either 21 or 22 December on the Western (Gregorian) calendar. It is very important that it is often marked with a special dinner, and there is a saying in traditional Chinese culture that "Winter solstice is more important than the New Year". From the period between 1850 and 1945 when Christianity was regarded as purely Western culture, Christmas was often called "Western winter solstice" by the Chinese people.
I have found the following pages that discuss chinese calendar to more detail and fluently in English:
http://webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-chinese.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_calendar
http://www.friesian.com/chinacal.htm