Chinese New Year Snake. Many online Chinese Sign calculators do not account for the non-alignment of the two calendars, using Gregorian-calendar years rather than official Chinese New Year dates. One scheme of continuously numbered Chinese-calendar years assigns 4709 to the year beginning, 2011, but this is not universally accepted; the calendar is traditionally cyclical, not continuously numbered. Although the Chinese calendar traditionally does not use continuously numbered years, outside China its years are sometimes numbered from the purported reign of the mythical Yellow Emperor in the 3rd millennium BCE. But at least three different years numbered 1 are now used by various scholars,
Chinese era name Chinese calendar each year, regardless of the month in which the era name change took place. For example, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang changed his era name, Xiantian (先天, pinyin: xiān tiān) to Kaiyuan (開元, pinyin: kāi yuán) in the twelfth (i.e. last) month of the Chinese calendar. The second year of Kaiyuan (開元二年) began on the first day of the next month (i.e. Chinese New Year's Day); this made the first year of Kaiyuan (開元元年) consist of only the last few days in the twelfth month following the name change. Ming and Qing emperors generally used only one era name