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 calendar introduced under the Zhou dynasty. This calendar set the beginning of the year at the day of the new moon before the winter solstice. It also set the "shàngyuán" as the winter solstice of a "dīngsì" year, making the year it was introduced around 2,758,130. Several competing lunisolar calendars were also introduced, especially by states fighting Zhou control during the Warring States period. The state of Lu issued its own Lu calendar(). Jin issued the Xia calendar () in 102 AD, with a year beginning on the day of the new moon nearest the March equinox. Qin issued the Zhuanxu