Shichen
The traditional Chinese 'double hour': two hours, twelve per day, each named after an animal of the zodiac.
1 shichen = 7,200 seconds (exactly).
About the shichen
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.
Sources: Wikipedia: Chinese zodiac; Wikipedia: Chinese units of measurement
Shichen conversion chart
1 shichen expressed in every other time unit:
| Unit | 1 shichen |
|---|---|
| Seconds | 7,200 |
| Minutes | 120 |
| Hours | 2 |
| Days | 0.08333333333 |
| Weeks | 0.0119047619 |
| Months | 0.002737907007 |
| Years | 0.0002281589172 |
| Milliseconds | 7,200,000 |
| Microseconds | 7,200,000,000 |
| Nanoseconds | 7,200,000,000,000 |
| Decades | 0.00002281589172 |
| Centuries | 0.000002281589172 |
| Millennia | 2.281589172×10⁻⁷ |
| Picoseconds | 7.2×10¹⁵ |
| Common Years | 0.0002283105023 |
| Leap Years | 0.0002276867031 |
| Julian Years | 0.0002281542323 |
| Tropical Years | 0.0002281591109 |
| Sidereal Years | 0.0002281502577 |
| Synodic Months | 0.002821932556 |
| Sidereal Days | 0.08356149248 |
| Aeons | 2.281589172×10⁻¹³ |
| Shakes | 720,000,000,000 |
| Fortnights | 0.005952380952 |
| Score | 0.00001140794586 |
| Lustra | 0.00004563178345 |
| Olympiads | 0.00005703972931 |
| Indictions | 0.00001521059448 |
| Jubilees | 0.000004563178345 |
| Ghati | 5 |
| Muhurtas | 2.5 |
| Prahar | 0.6666666667 |
| Moments | 80 |
| Ship's Watches | 0.5 |
| Kin (Maya) | 0.08333333333 |
| Winals | 0.004166666667 |
| Tun (Maya) | 0.0002314814815 |
| Katuns | 0.00001157407407 |
| Baktuns | 5.787037037×10⁻⁷ |
More Chinese units
- fen (Chinese) (length)
- cun (Chinese) (length)
- chi (Chinese) (length)
- zhang (Chinese) (length)
- li (Chinese) (length)
- qian (Chinese) (weight & mass)
- liang (Chinese) (weight & mass)
- jin (Chinese) (weight & mass)
- dan (Chinese) (weight & mass)
- catty (Hong Kong) (weight & mass)
- tael (Hong Kong) (weight & mass)
- mu (Chinese) (area)
- qing (Chinese) (area)
- yi / oku (East Asian) (counting & quantity)
Browse all time units.