NAME
    Date::Chinese - Calculate dates in the Chinese calendar

SYNOPSIS
      use Date::Chinese;

      $year = yearofthe( 1999 ); # "Year of the hare, earth"

DESCRIPTION
    Please note that the API of this module is *guaranteed* to change in
    future versions. I'll hopefully be adding more details about the date,
    rather than just the year.

    You should also note that the Chinese new year does not conicide with
    the Gregorian new year, so the determination of what year it is in the
    Chinese calendar is only going to be correct for a portion of the
    Gregorian year.

SUPPORT
    datetime@perl.org

AUTHOR
            Rich Bowen
            CPAN ID: RBOW
            rbowen@rcbowen.com
            http://www.rcbowen.com

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright (c) 2001 Rich Bowen. All rights reserved. This program is free
    software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms
    as Perl itself.

    The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included
    with this module.

SEE ALSO
     perl(1).
     http://dates.rcbowen.com/

About the Chinese calendar
    Reference: The Oxford Companion to the Year - Bonnie Blackburn and
    Leofranc Holford-Strevens. Pg 696-707

    The Chinese calendar is a 19 year cycle. Seven of these 19 years have 13
    months, and the rest have 12. There's a whole heck of a lot more to it
    than the 12 animals that you see on your placemat at your favorite
    Chinese restaurant.

    There is a cycle of 10 stems and 12 branches. Each stem has associated
    with it an element (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) a yang (fir,
    kindling, hill, weapons, waves) a yin (bamboo, lamp-flame, plain,
    kettle, brooks) a cardinal point (east, south, centre, west, north) and
    a planet (Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, Mercury).

    Likewise, each branch has associated with it an animal, an element, a
    double-hour, a compass point, and a sign of the zodiac.

    Each of these various cycles are going on at the same time, and so
    interact with each other to produce combinations of all of these
    different components. And various combinations mean various things.

    There are, of course, many folks that have more knowledge of how this
    all works than I do. I just used to be a mathematician.

    http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/calendar/chinese.shtml seems like a
    good place to start, but there are many other very informative sites on
    the net.