In the past, ancient Chinese were all living and surviving by agriculture, farming is the key to have food to eat and live on. Nothing can get away from farming. Therefore, they created 2 sets of characters that illustrates the cycle of nature just like the seasons.
The Tin-Gon 天干, the heavenly stems. There are 10 Tin-Gon 天干. Plus there are 12 Dei-Jee 地支 which is the earthlings branches. These two combine to form 60 combos which a big cycle of nature. Now this is just way too complex to explain here but take a look at our "Fan Tai Sui" video and we will explain how these Tin-Gon and Dei-Jee works and means:
With the help of the Tin Gon and Dei Jee, the Chinese have two sets of characters like the ABCD and the 1234... and so these became very common things for them as well. They soon use the Dei-Jee (12 characters) to record time.
this is the 12 Dei-Jee cycle. It runs from the bottom 子 and go clockwise a round and cycle repeats. This later on also relates to the zodiac stuff as well with the 12 animals.
The Gwai Biu 圭表 that we explained in the Tai Chi Logo Lesson before, was used to record the days in a year by using the shadow. Now this circular tool was also invented called the 日晷Yat Kwai, which is to use the shadow of the center pin to see the "time" of the day! Of course, this thing is way cool but it doesn't work on cloudy days or at night. Later on, the wise men worked together and created this!
This invention is called the 漏壺 Lau-Woo, the dripping hourglass. The tool have a dripping hole at the bottom that allow water inside to drip out in a certain speed and the brass or wooden "ruler" in the center will float or sink down which results in a "meter like" tool that allow the people to read the measurements and know the time of the day as well. This tool was cool but not practical because the water pressure is not consistent and the time is not accurate, plus it is way too much hassle to tune it everyday during refill of the water. Therefore, people came up with this idea:
This idea is very cool, it consist of four buckets that drips from top to bottom and the bottom one works just like the original invention. The ruler is divided into 96 units, and 12 sections which use the "dei-jee" to record the hour and the units which are smaller in between to record one unit = 15mins current time.
So as people use this, the sunlight is not required anymore and they only need to tune the tool once every day according to the first "Yat Kwai" (the circular thing) by seeing the shadow and they will be able to "program" their dripping buckets! This is the way how Chinese keep track of time in the ancient days and so they have 15mins for each unit and 12 "sections" a day with 2 hours for each sections named with one of the twelve Dei-Jee. 地支. In history, of course water was not long favored as well and so more inventions were made later on like the sand dripping version, imported gear-operated clocks and so on were more favored by the kings and so later on the Chinese started to follow the romans and used the gears-operated standard time. Of course, this also plays a very important role in the Chinese ancient wisdom too as you can see how time, days, and years were all recorded with these systematic mathematical formulas......! Surprised! Do you believe that Taoism, even the magic, are all related to these as well? Well, maybe you don't, or maybe you do. In the journey of Taoism, you will find out while you learn more and experience more!
