CHINESE PUZZLEDOM ]')'.> 



B.C.), to be able to calculate the motions of celestial bodies 

 and to fix the Solstices and Equinoxes; and the Shu Ching 

 (fll^S ), or Book of History, shows that they knew the length 

 of the year to within an hour of true time. Considering that 

 Mathematics are not taught in Chinese schools, and Arith- 

 metic is not included in any native school curriculum any 

 more than Hebrew, the puzzle is, how do they learn it? 

 The abacus is for the accountant and the tradespeople, who 

 learn its manipulation how and where they can. Notwith- 

 standing, it cannot be denied that the Chinese are good 

 calculators; they can count, and the lowest domestic servant, 

 however benighted he may be, in spite of currency intri- 

 cacies, in spite of the incomprehensible mutations of ex- 

 change, and the puzzling anomalies of weights and measures, 

 has enough arithmetic in his soul to safeguard him against 

 " squeezing" himself. 



The Chinese system of chronology, like everything 

 Chinese, is different from any other system of chronology in 

 the world. It is known as the "Sexagenary Cycle" 

 ( sZ ~f* #i *?■?•), and was invented by a Minister of the 

 Emperor Huang Ti, when the science of numbers had 

 scarcely dawned among the Arabs. We are at present in 

 the 55th year of the 76th Cycle. Taking the Cycle of sixty 

 years and multiplying it by 76, it will be seen that the first 

 year of the first Cycle goes back to the year 2637 B.C., and 

 that 4555 years have elapsed since the introduction of the 

 system of Cycles, thus giving China the longest unbroken 

 chronological period on record. Now, the difficulty is this. 

 Each year in a Cycle has a distinguishing name, or what is 

 called a "Cyclical Term," which is derived from two sets of 

 characters, one composed of ten characters, called the "Ten 

 Celestial Stems," ¥ ^ 13 T R 3 H $ i 5S, and the 

 other composed of twelve characters called the "Twelve 

 Terrestrial Branches" ^SEL^^HB^^^M^^ 

 To show how these "Cyclical Terms" are arrived at, let us 

 take the first ten letters of the alphabet, from a to j, for the 

 "Celestial Stems," and twelve numbers, from 1 to 12, for 

 the "Terrestrial Branches," and place them in two rows, 

 abcdefghij 

 123456789 10 11 12 

 the numbers immediately under the letters. We thus have 

 the first ten "Cyclical Terms" in al, b2, c3, etc., up to jlO. 

 After this we shift the whole top row of letters forward till 

 we get all, and bl2; then the numbers being exhausted, we 

 shift the whole row of numbers forward till we get cl, d2, 

 e3, etc., and, as each row is used up we shift it forward. 

 In this manner the letters are shifted six times, and the 



