Shichen to Years (shichen to yr)
1 shichen equals 0.0002281589172 years (rounded).
How to convert shichen to years
To convert shichen to years, multiply the number of shichen by 0.0002281589172. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply years by 4,382.91.
years = shichen × 0.0002281589172
Example: 10 shichen = 0.002281589172 years.
Months and years are not constant. This site uses the average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days, so one 'year' converts to 365.2425 days, not 365; use 'common year' for exactly 365 days.
About these units
Shichen (shichen)
The traditional Chinese 'double hour': two hours, twelve per day, each named after an animal of the zodiac.
Chinese clocks did not always count 24 hours. Since the Han dynasty the day has been divided into twelve periods named after the Earthly Branches, each lasting two hours and called a shichen. The first, zi, runs from 23:00 to 01:00 and is linked to the rat, followed by ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. The animal marks the centre of its period, so the horse sits at noon.
The animals were a practical shorthand, since the branch characters were easy to confuse, as the Eastern Han scholar Xu Shen noted. A Sui dynasty Buddhist text even gave each shichen three animals, one for morning, midday and evening. In the figure used here a shichen is exactly one twelfth of a day, or 7,200 seconds. The same twelve branches also name the years of the zodiac cycle.
1 shichen = 7,200 seconds (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Chinese zodiac; Wikipedia: Chinese units of measurement
Year (yr)
The average Gregorian calendar year of 365.2425 days (31,556,952 seconds). A common year has 365 days and a leap year 366.
A year is the Earth's trip around the Sun, but there are several versions. The tropical year, which tracks the seasons, is about 365.2422 days. The sidereal year, measured against the stars, is about 365.2564 days, roughly 20 minutes longer, because the Earth's axis precesses. Calendars must squeeze these into whole days, which is the origin of leap years. English year descends from Old English gear, while Latin annus, the source of annual, comes from a different root.
The Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII's bull of 24 February 1582, fixed the problem of Julian drift that had moved the March equinox away from 21 March and upset the date of Easter. Ten days were skipped, so Thursday 4 October was followed by Friday 15 October. Its rule of skipping leap days in century years not divisible by 400 gives a mean year of 365.2425 days, the value this site uses for the year. Britain and its empire switched in 1752 and Russia in 1918. Scientists write the year as a, with the Julian year fixed at 31,557,600 seconds.
1 year = 31,556,952 seconds (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Year; Wikipedia: Gregorian calendar
Related conversions
- Years to shichen (reverse)
- Shichen to seconds
- Shichen to minutes
- Shichen to hours
- Shichen to days
- Shichen to weeks
- Shichen to months
- Seconds to years
- Minutes to years
- Hours to years
- Days to years
- Weeks to years
- Months to years
- Milliseconds to years
- Microseconds to years
- Nanoseconds to years
- Decades to years
- Centuries to years
- Millennia to years
See all time units.