Calendar world for civil purposes. It is a purely solar calendar, with a cycle of leap days in a 400-year cycle designed to keep the duration of the year aligned with the solar year. Each Gregorian year has either 365 or 366 days (the leap day being inserted as 29 February), amounting to an average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days (compared to a solar year of 365.2422 days). It was introduced in 1582 as a refinement to the Julian calendar which had been in use throughout the European Middle Ages, amounting to a 0.002% correction in the length of the year.
Chinese calendar year had 12 months, with a ten-day week intercalated in summer as needed to keep up with the tropical year. The 10 Heavenly Stems and 12 Earthly Branches were used to mark days. A third version is the balanced calendar (). A year was 365.25 days, and a month was 29.5 days. After every 16th month, a half-month was intercalated. According to oracle bone records, the Shang dynasty calendar ( BC) was a balanced calendar with 12 to 14 months in a year; the month after the winter solstice was "Zhēngyuè". The first lunisolar calendar was the Zhou calendar (),