We don't intuit.
We calculate.

Most “Eastern astrology” products do three things: turn a birthday into a star sign, turn a zodiac animal into one of twelve personalities, then attach a paragraph that sounds accurate. None of that needs a calendar. All of it needs a template.

We do the other thing: get the time right first, then talk about meaning. There are four layers below. Get any one of them wrong and every conclusion after it is void.

01 · The year turns at Lichun, the month at solar terms

In the Chinese calendar the “year” does not begin on 1 January — it begins at Lichun, the start of spring. The “month” does not begin on the 1st — it is cut by the twelve “jie” solar terms.

Lichun 2024 fell on 4 February at 16:27. Someone born at 16:00 has a Gui-Mao year pillar. Someone born at 17:00 has a Jia-Chen year pillar.
One hour apart, two different years.

We locate each solar term by solar longitude: the instant the sun reaches 315° is Lichun. That instant moves every year, which is why a fixed date table cannot do this job.

02 · True solar time, not clock time

Twelve o'clock on a clock is the midpoint of an administrative time zone, not the moment the local sun is highest. Restoring “where the sun was when you were born” takes two corrections:

• Longitude: four minutes per degree away from the standard meridian. Ürümqi (87.6° E) runs 130 minutes behind the 120° E meridian.
• Equation of time: the earth's orbit is an ellipse, so true solar time runs up to ±16 minutes against mean solar time.
• Historical daylight saving: China used it from 1986 to 1991; Europe and North America still do. We read it from the birth city's time zone.

Example: born 15 June 1990 at 12:00 in Ürümqi.
Clock 12:00 → longitude −130 min → daylight saving −60 min → true solar time 08:50. That is the Chen hour, not the Wu hour.

03 · The ten gods are a network of relations

Ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches. Between any two there are five relations: same as me, produces me, I produce, restrains me, I restrain. Add yin and yang — that is the ten gods.

So we don't say “you have a Seven Killings personality”. We say: your day master is flanked by Seven Killings, which means when nobody pushes you, you push yourself to exhaustion. The first is a label. The second is a description you can test against your own life.

04 · Decades and years, down to the month

Luck cycles run ten years each, derived from the time between birth and the nearest solar term: three days equal one year, one day equals four months. A yang year born male, or a yin year born female, runs forward; the others run backward.

The annual pillar interacts with the decade, the day branch and the wealth star through clashes, combinations and punishments. That interaction is what decides whether a year “has something in it”. It is also the only place where we will give you specific months.

05 · Three things we state up front

Solar term precision. Term instants are computed from the sun's apparent longitude series and typically land within ten minutes of the Purple Mountain Observatory's published data. So if a birth falls within fifteen minutes of a term boundary, the year or month pillar is genuinely disputed — in that case, take the observatory's figure, not ours. We don't pretend to be exact to the second.

When the day changes. We start the next day at 23:00 (the “early Zi” school). There is a rival “late Zi” school; we follow the first and print the true solar time on the chart so you can re-check under the other.

How we count the elements. By the root qi of the eight characters, with the month branch weighted double (the month branch holds the season). Hidden stems are listed on the chart but not folded into a total — schools disagree about whether they count and by how much, so rather than bury the number we show you the raw material.

Three things we won't do

One, we won't promise to change your fate. This discipline can describe the structure of time; it cannot rewrite it. What it can do is tell you when to move and when to hold.

Two, we won't rule on health, investments or law. A chart can show “a heavy year”. It cannot show which stock to buy.

Three, we won't invent user numbers. You will not see “1.2 million charts cast” here — because it would be a fabrication, and a fabricated number does not make the arithmetic any better.

Three things you can check yourself

• Take your birth time and city and compare the year, month and day pillars against any published perpetual calendar. Ours must match exactly.
• Look up the exact Lichun moment for your birth year and see whether it fell before or after you were born.
• Cast a chart for two cities on very different longitudes at the same clock time and watch the hour pillar change. If it doesn't change, that tool never implemented true solar time.