Chinese Almanac Today: How to Read Yi and Ji
Read a Chinese daily almanac in English: lunar dates, Yi and Ji, the day phase and a reproducible example, with each kind of statement kept in context.
What does a Chinese almanac mean when it marks a day as suitable for travel, or unsuitable for moving house? The useful first step is to read the labels accurately. A calendar entry records a tradition; it does not know your weather forecast, appointment, budget or circumstances.
This guide walks through the fields in YUAN's daily almanac. You can use it beside the tool, including when you do not read Chinese.
A quick way to read today's entry
- Check the selected Gregorian date and the calendar's time zone.
- Read the corresponding lunar month and day.
- Treat the day stem and its phase as calendar labels.
- Compare the short English cards with the complete Chinese record.
- Keep any editorial reflection separate from the traditional entries.
You can open today's almanac now, then return to this explanation. The tool opens without registration, a birth date or a purchase.
A lunar calendar and an almanac answer different questions
An unfamiliar lunar date can make every part of a Chinese calendar look like one calculation. It helps to separate the jobs.
| Part of the page | The question it answers | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| Lunar date | Which lunar month and day correspond to the selected date? | Whether a plan will succeed |
| Day stem and phase | Which conventional day label is returned, and how does its stem map to a phase? | Your personal element or personality |
| Solar term | Which seasonal term was most recently reached? | That the selected date itself starts a term |
| 宜 and 忌 | Which activity categories appear in the source almanac's favored and avoided lists? | A prediction or a personalized recommendation |
| Reflection | Which small question does YUAN's editorial exercise offer? | A quotation from a classical almanac |
The Hong Kong Observatory's conversion tables are useful for checking Gregorian-to-lunar dates. They are not a source for all of the activity judgments displayed by different almanacs. YUAN gets its activity lists from the named software library and rule setting described in our calendar method.
What do Yi and Ji mean?
The heading 宜, usually romanized yi, introduces activities traditionally favored in the source record. 忌, ji, introduces activities traditionally avoided. English translations such as “suitable” and “unsuitable” can sound like instructions. On YUAN, the words describe how an activity is classified by that almanac.
Three examples help make the vocabulary more concrete:
- 出行 — setting out on a journey. This is a historical travel category. It is not a modern assessment of road conditions or flight reliability.
- 入宅 — entering a home. It refers to the traditional occasion of entering a new home; it is not a property inspection.
- 祭祀 — offerings in a ritual context. This concerns ritual practice, rather than an everyday productivity task.
Read the Chinese term alongside the English explanation. If a short translation seems surprising, the original wording helps you check whether two websites are discussing the same activity.
A worked example: 20 October 2026
Select 2026-10-20 in the tool. With YUAN's pinned library and settings, the lunar date is month 9, day 11. The day label is 丁卯, and the phase card shows Fire because 丁 is a Fire stem.
The short favored cards include setting out on a journey, ritual offerings and prayers for blessings. These are selected translations from the returned record. They are not a statement that those are the only activities you can undertake that day.
Now move to 2026-10-21. The displayed lunar day becomes month 9, day 12, and the phase becomes Earth from the stem 戊. The changed labels belong to the selected dates. They do not mean that you changed personality overnight.
These are fixed examples you can reproduce. For the current entry, use the tool's Today button rather than assuming that the example date is today's date.
Why the cards are shorter than the source record
YUAN shows up to three reviewed activity translations in each main card. The full list can be longer. An activity missing from a card may simply lack a reviewed short English translation; its absence is not a prohibition.
Open Complete Chinese source record to see everything returned by the library. Broad phrases can also appear there. For example, 馀事勿取 is a restrictive phrase about other matters; it should not be turned into a positive suggestion such as “do miscellaneous things.” We retain the wording in the full record rather than promoting it as an activity.
Why might two almanacs disagree?
Before deciding that a site is wrong, compare four things:
- Selected date: Are both pages showing the same civil date?
- Time basis: Does “today” use your location, Beijing time or another basis?
- Source and rule set: Are the lists drawn from the same edition, tradition or software setting?
- Display and translation: Is one page showing the full list while another shows a selection?
YUAN uses Asia/Shanghai, UTC+8, and lunar-javascript 1.7.7, with activity calls explicitly set to sect 1. This makes our result reproducible; it does not make that setting universal across traditions. See why the calendar's date can differ from your local date.
Turn a calendar visit into a useful habit
Try a small reading routine: check the date, learn one unfamiliar term, then choose an action using your real circumstances. You might use the reflection as a prompt to write a note, clear a surface or think about a decision. Those suggestions are our modern editorial exercises.
For travel, appointments and major commitments, use the information relevant to the decision. An almanac can be an object of cultural interest without being placed in charge of your plans.
Continue with the daily almanac, the calendar method, or the Five Phases introduction. To report a translation or calculation problem, use Contact and corrections and include the selected date and a source.