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 year from 8 February 2016 to 27 January 2017 was a "Bǐngshēn" year () of . During the Tang Dynasty, the Earthly Branches were used to mark the months from December 761 to May 762. Over this period, the year began with the winter solstice. In China, a person's official age is based on the Gregorian calendar; for traditional use, age is based on the Chinese calendar. At birth, a child is considered one year old; after each Chinese New Year, one year is added to their traditional age. Because of the potential for confusion, infant ages are often given