Chen

Chen is the fifth of the twelve Earthly Branches (dizhi). Its zodiac animal is the Dragon, the only mythical creature of the twelve, its element is Earth, its direction is east-southeast, and its double-hour runs from 7 to 9 am, the mid-morning. As one of the twelve branches it combines with the ten Heavenly Stems to form the sexagenary cycle of sixty that numbers years, months, days, and double-hours. The branch names the fifth animal of the twelve-year cycle and the corresponding month and double-hour, and the Dragon carries especially auspicious associations in the almanac. These are the conventions of the Chinese calendrical and cosmological tradition, in which the twelve branches order the animal years, the months, and the twelve two-hour periods into which the day is divided.

Chen is the fifth Earthly Branch, corresponding to the Dragon, the only one of the twelve zodiac animals with no counterpart in ordinary nature, and to the double hour from 7 am to 9 am. Its dominant hidden stem is Wu, giving it the Earth phase, with Yi and Gui present as secondary hidden stems, reflecting the Dragon's traditional association with both the soil and the rain-bringing clouds and rivers it was said to command. Chen is a Yang-polarity branch, pairing only with Jia, Bing, Wu, Geng or Ren within the sexagenary cycle, and it governs the third lunar month, the height of spring. Of the twelve, the Dragon year is generally regarded in Chinese folk culture as the most auspicious for a birth, and hospital birth-rate records in China and other East Asian countries with large Chinese communities show measurable spikes in Dragon years, a documented demographic effect of the belief rather than of the branch itself.

Beyond the animal it carries, a branch enters three fixed sets of relations that the almanac and the fate-calculation tradition use constantly. Chen belongs to the trio Shen, Zi and Chen, one of the four groups of three branches spaced four apart which are read as combining into Water. It clashes with Xu, the branch six places away, and it forms one of the six harmonies with You. These relations are properties of position in the twelve, not of the animal.

The branches also do more work than the year cycle they are best known for. They divide the day into twelve double hours, so Chen names a period of two hours as well as a year and a month; they mark the twelve directions of the compass, Chen standing at east-southeast; and they carry the twelve stations against which the movement of Jupiter was tracked, which is one proposed origin for the twelve-year cycle itself.

The stem-and-branch day count is the longest continuously running day count known. Numbering days by ganzhi begins in the Shang inscriptions and has run without acknowledged interruption since, through every dynastic change and every calendar reform, because the cycle of sixty is independent of any astronomical quantity and therefore needs no correction. Chinese historical dates from the classical period onward can be checked against it.

Chen closes the spring in the month assignment and is one of the four Earth branches. It is also the only branch whose animal is not a living creature, which has drawn comment since at least the medieval period without producing an agreed explanation; the animal cycle itself is later than the branches and its origin is not recorded.

Sources Chinese Mathematical Astrology: Reaching Out to the StarsHo Peng Yoke with The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the Ritual Origins of the CalendarAdam Smith