Calendar year ("leap days" or "intercalary days"). The Gregorian year, which is in use in most of the world, begins on January 1 and ends on December 31. It has a length of 365 days in an ordinary year, with 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes, or 31,536,000 seconds; but 366 days in a leap year, with 8,784 hours, 527,040 minutes, or 31,622,400 seconds. With 97 leap years every 400 years, the year has an average length of 365.2425 days. Other formula-based calendars can have lengths which are further out of step with the solar cycle: for example, the Julian calendar has an average
Chinese calendar (, 29 days); stem branches for the first, eleventh, and 21st days, and the date, stem branch and time of the solar terms. The traditional Chinese calendar was developed between 771 and 476 BC, during the Spring and Autumn period of the Eastern Zhou dynasty. Before the Zhou dynasty, solar calendars were used. One version of the solar calendar is the five-elements calendar (), which derives from the Wu Xing. A 365-day year was divided into five phases of 73 days, with each phase corresponding to a Wu Xing element. A phase began with a governing-element day (), followed by