Explore "China" by Harry Alverson Franck on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Fourth of July, Christmas, and our other holidays mean nothing to the Chinese, but they do celebrate certain days of their own. The most important of these is New Year's, though even that is not the same day as ours. For the Chinese still use the moon calendar, and their lunar New Year's comes from three to six weeks later than our January first. Every time there is a new moon they start a new month. As it is only twenty-eight days from one new moon to another, this makes their year short. So they put in an extra month every two or three years.
They have no real names for their months, but call them "First Moon," "Second Moon," and so on. The extra month is not named thirteen, however, but is "tucked in," as it were. So if you happen to be in China during one of their years of thirteen months you may wake up some morning and find the month that was finished the night before starting over again. Its name might be translated "June number two," or something of the sort.