| This has been briefly and unclearly mentioned before but the current treatment of Chinese dating in our year by year infoboxes is nearly entirely mistaken. Yes, the sexagenary cycle is real and important to mention.
A. No, Yellow Emperor dates aren't really a thing, the way they're being presented.
I mean, sure, they're a thing in the exact same way AUC dates are. They're a fad some people went through in the 19th & 20th century, largely based on the mistaken idea that other important people had used them. The Romans actually almost entirely used eponymous consular dating. The Chinese actually entirely (except for that fad still somewhat upheld on almanac-style Chinese lunisolar calendars) used imperial era names.
It's a more valid notable system than the Discordian calendar we keep as lagniappe from Wiki's fun early days, sure, but it's entirely WP:LIE to treat it as the Chinese year in any historical context. It's fine to keep but it absolutely needs to be labeled (YE, AH, AHD, whatever) to clarify what it is, which isn't the "Chinese calendar year".
B. No, we don't need to include two Yellow Emperor dates.
There's a list of different epochs on our Chinese calendar page. No, the other ones aren't as notable (especially in English) as YE dating and don't need to be included in the infobox. However, absolutely none of them involve a computation that even remotely produces an equivalent year 4514/4515 for AD 2024.
The same section of the same page includes what I think the second "Chinese year" in the infobox is trying to do: In 1905, the Jiangsu provincial government used a system that would've made 2024 the year 4514/4515 if anyone still used their system. Per cursory Googling in English, we're the only ones who seem to and we should just stop. Unless the second system is actually still prominently used (which the article should be changed to discuss), no, it isn't important to cover variant YE dates any more than all the variant AUC dates or Marianus Scotus's variant AD computation that was popular for a while in the 12th century.
C. Yes, we absolutely need to include the era dates.
Like the Greek and Romans, Northern and Southern Dynasties had more than one era name and both should be included. Years were double counted as the last year of a dying emperor's reign and the first year of his successor's; both should be included. Reigns before the Han dynasty without formal era names should just list the regnal names (or conventional regency name) standard in Chinese historiography at least as far back as the Eastern Zhou. We could simply omit less certain regnal years before that or include conventional dates from a single system along the same lines as the calculation of the Yellow Emperor's reign in the first place; we don't seem to include footnotes on questionable eras for the other sections but could for those if people felt strongly about it.
In any case, there's at least 2000-odd years of an established dating system being used by roughly a fourth of humanity that we aren't mentioning or even vaguely hinting at. We should fix that.
D. Eh, the "Minguo calendar" is simply the continuation of the exact same system,
switched over to Gregorian months and years. I get why you might not want to include it in the "Chinese year" section after 1949 and why that means not including it before 1949 either. Fact remains that it's literally the exact same system, using the people's government as the new eternal era name. Similarly, as far as our article on the Republic of China calendar knows, it isn't used for dates before 1912. Our template currently (mis)uses it for ~3000 years before 1912, at least as far back as 719 BC. It's possible some people have used it that way, which should be added to our article. It's certainly uncommon and the infobox shouldn't be using it for any of those earlier years at all, just like we don't have a Juche calendar date for 1900.
E. No, we shouldn't have a separate name for the ROC era.
The Minguo era page might very well be in the wrong place. The discussion for its move from page to "North Korean calendar". Whichever is right, though, our infobox and the page should be using the same name for the same epoch.
โ LlywelynII 22:14, 5 June 2024 (UTC)
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