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Chinese Characters and Chinese Era
Archeological discoveries show that ancient people in China began to use the Celestial Stemand the Terrestrial Branch to record time as early as the Yin and Shang period about 4,000 years ago.
Within each 60-year cycle, each year is assigned name consisting of two components:
The first component is a Celestial Stem. These words are Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui in Pingyin and they have no English equivalents.
The second component is a Terrestrial Branch. The names of the corresponding animals in the zodiac cycle of 12 animals are given in parentheses. They are Zi(rat),Chou(ox),Yin(tiger),Mao(hare, rabbit),Chen(dragon),Si(snake),Wei(sheep),Shen(monkey),You(rooster),Xu(dog) and Hai(pig).
Each of the two components is used sequentially. Thus, the 1st year of the 60-year cycle becomes Jia-Zi, the 2nd year is Yi-Chou,the 3rd year is Bing-Yin, etc. When we reach the end of a component, we start from the beginning: The 10th year is Gui-You, the 11th year is Jia-Xu(restarting the Celestial Stem), the 12th year is Yi-Hai, and the 13th year is Bing-Zi(restarting the Terrestrial Branch). Finally, the 60th year becomes Gui-Hai.
This way of naming years within a 60-year cycle goes back approximately 2000 years. A similar naming of days and months has fallen into disuse, but the date name is still listed in calendars.
It is customary to number the 60-year cycles since 2637 B.C.E., when the calendar was supposedly invented. In that year the first 60-year cycle started.
Partial Tones of Chinese Characters
Two major elements of Chinese characters are grapheme and pronunciation. In some cases, pronunciation becomes the only measure to indicate the meaning of a character. Besides this, there are a number of Chinese characters with the same pronunciation and these characters have different graphemes and meanings though they are pronounced the same. It is through these characters with similar pronunciation that partial tones of Chinese characters convey profound meanings.
In the old days, ordinary people dared not express their agony and resistance against oppression and tyranny in a straightforward way, so they produced many ballads related to politics making use of partial tones in Chinese characters, that is, they used characters that meant differently but were pronounced the same to form ballads and express their inner feelings in an indirect way.
After repeated use of partial tones, a rhetoric method of the Chinese language was formed --Xieyin Ti(partial tone style). In this style of writing, characters at the end of certain lines should have partial tones.
Partial tones not only appear in folk songs but also are widely used in people's daily life. For instance, the character  (Fu) means good fortune. Characters  (inverse) and  (arrive) have the same pronunciation of Dao. Making use of these partial tones, Chinese households usually post the character (Fu) inversely on their doors during the Spring Festival to mean that Good fortune has arrived at their houses.
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