The Chinese Almanac: How the Tung Shing Marks a Lucky Day

The Chinese almanac, 通勝 (tōngshèng, the "book of all victories", tung shing in Cantonese) or 黃曆 (huánglì, the "yellow calendar"), is the traditional day-by-day guide to timing. For every date it records the day's place in the sixty-day cycle, a list of activities the day favors, a list it warns against, the zodiac animal the day clashes with, and the day's officer in a twelve-day rotation. Every dated guide on this site, from wedding dates to moving days, is read out of this book. This page explains the book itself: where it comes from, how a single day is marked, and why two almanacs printed the same year do not always agree.

Where the almanac comes from

For most of Chinese history, the calendar was not a household product. It was an instrument of state. Issuing the year's calendar, fixing the months, the solar terms, and the festival dates, was one of the emperor's defining acts, carried out by the court's own astronomers; the tradition called this 授時 (shòushí, "granting the seasons"). For long stretches, printing a private calendar was forbidden outright.

The everyday name carries that history. 黃曆 (huánglì, "yellow calendar") is a homophone of 皇曆 (huánglì, "imperial calendar"), and the two have been written interchangeably for centuries. When the empire ended in 1912, the monopoly ended with it, and commercial almanac publishing flourished, nowhere more durably than in Hong Kong and Guangdong, where family publishing houses have issued thick annual editions ever since. The Cantonese name adds one last flourish: the older term 通書 (tōngshū, "book of everything") sounds in Cantonese like "lose everything", so publishers renamed it 通勝 (tung shing), "win everything". The red-covered brick of a book in a Hong Kong bookshop today is the direct descendant of the imperial state calendar, with centuries of folk practice layered on top.

How a single day is marked

Open any almanac to any date and you will find the same four layers.

The day's stem-branch, 干支 (gānzhī). Every day has a name in the sixty-day cycle formed by pairing ten heavenly stems with twelve earthly branches. This is the day's identity, the coordinate everything else is computed from. The branch also gives the day its zodiac animal.

The 宜 (yí, "favorable for") list. A short list of activities the day is considered good for: marrying, moving house, opening a business, signing contracts, sweeping graves, cutting hair, travelling. The classical vocabulary is compact and specific, 嫁娶 (jiàqǔ, marriage), 入宅 (rùzhái, moving in), 開市 (kāishì, opening for business), and the date-picking pages on this site are essentially organized searches of these lists.

The 忌 (jì, "avoid") list. The mirror image: activities the day is considered wrong for. A day can be 宜 for marriage and 忌 for moving at the same time. Some days carry the bleak entry 諸事不宜 (zhūshì bùyí, "no matter is favorable"), the almanac's way of saying sit this one out.

The clash animal, 冲 (chōng). Each day's branch stands directly opposite one other branch in the twelve-branch circle, and the almanac names the animal of that opposite branch as the day's clash. A day that clashes with the rooster, for example, is read as a day when people born in rooster years sit out the big events, whatever the 宜 list says. It is the detail most often missed by first-time almanac readers. If you want to know how your animal stands against the current year rather than a single day, that is a different calculation, and the 2026 luck checker runs it for you.

The twelve day officers, 建除十二神

Beneath the 宜 and 忌 lists sits the oldest layer of the system: a twelve-day cycle in which each day is governed by one of twelve officers, the 建除十二神 (jiànchú shí'èr shén, "the twelve gods of establishing and removing"). The mechanics are simple. Within each almanac month, the day whose branch matches the month's own branch is the Establish day, and the other eleven officers follow in fixed order. At the changeover between months, marked by the solar terms rather than the new moon, one officer repeats, which keeps the cycle aligned to the month.

The twelve, in order, with the plain-English sense of each:

1. 建 (jiàn, Establish). The cycle opens. The month's own qi, strong but brand new.
2. 除 (chú, Remove). Clearing away. Cleaning, ending, sweeping out the old.
3. 滿 (mǎn, Full). Abundance, filled to the brim.
4. 平 (píng, Level). Evenness, smoothing, ordinary balance.
5. 定 (dìng, Settle). Fixing things in place. Agreements, engagements, decisions meant to last.
6. 執 (zhí, Hold). Grasping firmly. Contracts, hiring, matters that need a firm grip.
7. 破 (pò, Break). Rupture. This day's branch clashes with the month itself.
8. 危 (wēi, Danger). Peril, a high and precarious place.
9. 成 (chéng, Succeed). Completion, things coming to fruition.
10. 收 (shōu, Harvest). Gathering in, collecting, storing.
11. 開 (kāi, Open). Opening up. Doors, businesses, beginnings.
12. 閉 (bì, Close). Shutting down. The qi at rest.

Which are lucky? The tradition compresses the answer into a rhyme that generations of almanac readers memorized: 建滿平收黑，除危定執黃，成開皆可用，破閉不相當 (jiàn mǎn píng shōu hēi, chú wēi dìng zhí huáng, chéng kāi jiē kěyòng, pò bì bù xiāngdāng). In plain English: Establish, Full, Level, and Harvest are "black" days, conventionally unfavorable; Remove, Danger, Settle, and Hold are "yellow" days, conventionally favorable; Succeed and Open are both usable; Break and Close are unsuitable.

Two of those assignments surprise everyone. Full sounds wonderful and is classed unfavorable; Danger sounds terrible and is classed favorable. The names describe the day's quality of energy, not a verdict: a day of brimming fullness leaves no room to add anything new, while a day named Danger calls for exactly the carefulness that serious undertakings deserve. That is the tradition's own reading, and it is why the officer layer cannot be judged by the names alone. The one officer everyone agrees on is Break: it clashes with its own month, and almanacs reserve it for demolition and little else.

Why two almanacs can disagree on the same day

Buy two respected almanacs in the same year and compare a random date, and sooner or later you will find one marking 宜 where the other marks 忌. This is not an error, and it is worth understanding before you trust any single source, including this one.

A day's verdict is not a single computation. It is a weighing of layers: the day officer, the day's stem-branch and its relations to the year and month, the day's position in the twenty-eight lunar lodges, 二十八宿 (èrshíbā xiù), and a large roster of day stars, 神煞 (shénshà), some auspicious, some baneful, each arriving and departing by its own rules. Different compiling traditions, and they are genuine lineages, weight these layers differently. One school lets a strong auspicious star redeem a black-officer day; another does not. Same sky, same date, different verdict.

Our own practice on this site follows from that honestly: every date we publish on the wedding, moving, and business opening pages is cross-checked against two to three published almanac sources, and a date the sources disagree on is dropped from our lists, not averaged. Where a disagreement is itself interesting, we say so.

How to read an almanac page in practice

The working method, in five steps:

1. Find the date and note the day's stem-branch and zodiac animal.
2. Check the clash animal first. If the day clashes with your own birth animal, tradition says this is not your day for major moves, whatever else the page says.
3. Read the 宜 list for the activity you have in mind, using the classical term for it. Marriage, moving, and opening each have their own word.
4. Read the 忌 list to make sure the same activity is not warned against, and watch for 諸事不宜 days.
5. Glance at the day officer as a second opinion. A yellow-officer day with your activity in the 宜 list is the classic green light; a Break day is a no regardless.

That is the whole discipline: a few minutes with the page, done in order. The almanac's year-level judgments, which animals the year favors and presses, run on a different mechanism entirely, the year's 太歲 (Tài Suì, the presiding "duke of the year"); the Tai Sui 2026 guide covers that side, and the FAQ answers the short questions in between.

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Sources and standard: the twelve day officers' order, mechanics, and conventional readings were cross-checked on 11 Jul 2026 against the FengShuied twelve day stars guide, the FourPillars.pro Jian-Chu system articles, and the Wonyan Consult Tong Shu day-officers guide, with the traditional favorable/unfavorable rhyme verified against Chinese-language references including the Baidu Baike entry on the twelve construction stars and the Life-Guide date-selection primer. Everything on this page is presented as cultural and historical material, how the tradition reads a calendar, not as a prediction or a promise of outcomes. The 建除十二神 readings and the 宜/忌 activity conventions are pending our in-house doctrinal review.