Li Chun, 2012

I was woken up in the middle of the night. Well, not exactly in the middle of the night but it was at about five o'clock this morning. My mobile phone had gone off; I had received a text message from one of my friends. "Hey," it read, "when are you gonna tell us about Li Chun this year?"

Omigosh, I have been so caught up in a project that I have failed to update this blog for several days now and my guilt has extended to my annual announcement about the Li Chun or the Coming of Spring. My apologies to everyone far and near who must have thought that I have disappeared from the earth's surface.

As always, I have to mention first that everything I know about Li Chun comes from this book by Joey Yap. His reference book on the Ten Thousand Year Calendar. And if you are still interested, here are what I wrote about Li Chun in 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008 and 2007.

So what about the date for Li Chun 立春 in 2012? First of all, the date remains unchanged. It is always on the fourth of February. The date doesn't move about like most of the other Chinese festivities because Li Chun, like Cheng Beng and Tang Chik (Tung Chik), depends on the position of the sun in the sky. Not the moon.

Now having already established that, let me tell you that this Ten Thousand Year Calendar book says that Li Chun will fall exactly on 6.24pm on 4 February 2012. For those referring to the Chinese calendar, this is the 13th day of the first moon.

So there you have it. It will be in the late afternoon that the real New Year starts for us Chinese. Just remember to be at home at this time and date to stick that little piece of red paper onto the family rice bucket. That's our nice, quaint tradition...