How to Calculate Your Chinese Lunar Age?

The Chinese lunar age is greatly used by people living in rural areas and less developed areas in China. Also, it’s used by Chinese people to predict or select baby’s gender based on the ancient Chinese Gender Calendar. 

Age counting in lunar age system: one year old at birth and add one year at every Spring Festival.
 

Lunar Age = current year in Chinese lunar calendar – your birth year in Chinese lunar calendar + 1.

 

Different with round age which takes the birth date as the dividing point, virtual age is divided by Spring Festival. If lunar age reckoning is employed, people will be one year old at birth and one year older every Chinese New Year. Before the lunar birthday, round age = virtual age - 2; after the lunar birthday, round age = virtual age - 1. Feel rather confused? For example, a person born in the 12th month of the lunar calendar is one year old at birth in virtual age system, and after the Spring Festival, he will be two years old. But in fact, he is only two months old! Since he has experienced the span of two years, he is two years old in lunar age and his round age = virtual age - 2, thus less than one year old. 
 

Lunar age starts from 1 rather than 0. Traditionally, the age of a baby is calculated by days only before the 100th-day anniversary after birth but after that it is counted by years rather than months and days.
 

Many people said that Chinese people take the 10-month conception as age one of babies to remember how hard mothers were in pregnancy and how hard the human reproduction is. And this shows the traditional Chinese virtue of respecting the aged and taking good care of children. Despite the positive energy of the saying, it is incorrect to introduce the lunar age in this way because conception date is not the starting point of lunar age or growth in virtual age. The period from birth to Lunar New Year's Eve is called one year in lunar age reckoning, which can be one day or one actual year; after the Spring Festival, the virtual age is one year older, i.e. two years old in virtual age. It is because Chinese people take year order as the starting point of birthday. When it comes to the starting point of birth, the ancient Bazi is more convincing. In ancient times, Chinese attached great importance to the birthday concept composed of year, month, day and hour, while the westerners focused on the one composed of month and day. Chinese count age by the year experiencing while western people count it by the time span experienced, so lunar age and round age are fundamentally different. But it has an advantage: older people can report the round age while younger people can report the virtual one.