Friday, August 17, 2007

The Year 1996

Did u know that Taiwan considers this year to be 1996?

I first smelled a rat when buying milk - surely the cows can't be milked in 1996?????! Smart alec me, tot perhaps they have some kind of cryptic numbering for milk instead of expiry dates.

I just learnt - one of those lightbulb moments, that Taiwan is still using the old imperial Chinese tradition of using the emperor's name and year of reign. It is also called ming-guo (民國), which starts in 1912, the year of the founding of the Republic of China.

Hence, 2007 is the "96th year of the Republic" (民國九十六年, 民國96年, or simply 96).

Months and days are still numbered according to the Gregorian calendar.

Incidentally, Korea and Japan are also using similar era type of calendars.

My source is Wikipedia - so this time I am right. The cows are milked this year. Whew!

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