info@imagin8press.comCOMING IN SEPTEMBER 2026.
From oracle bones and simple sundials to towering clockwork machines that rang gongs across imperial capitals, from time intervals ranging from a tenth of a second to over four thousand years, China has been measuring time since before the dawn of history. But the story of Chinese timekeeping is far more than a tale of ancient gadgets. It is a story about how a civilization understood the universe, and its place within it.
In China Time, best-selling author Jeff Pepper tells the story of the ingenious systems that have organized daily life in the Middle Kingdom. Discover how the Twelve Earthly Branches divide the day into periods heavy with symbolism, how night watchmen tracked the passage of time, how astronomers refined the day into ever-smaller increments, and how Buddhist thinkers imagined time in terms of fingersnaps and moments of thought.
You’ll meet the people whose innovations shaped China’s timekeeping and datekeeping, including the brilliant builders of huge towers whose complex clockworks transformed the analog flowing water into the first true digital “ticks” of measured time .
Along the way, you’ll encounter emperors claiming the Mandate of Heaven, poets reflecting on the brevity of life, and philosophers wrestling with the shifting length of daylight and the puzzling movement of the planets across the sky. You’ll see how calendars, constellations, lunar months, solar terms, and zodiac animals combined into a richly layered system shaping agriculture, government, religion, and everyday speech.
Clear, engaging, and accessible to readers with no background in Chinese language or history, China Time reveals how one of the world’s oldest civilizations answered timeless questions: what time is it, what day is it, and what does it really mean?
===============================================================
TABLE OF CONTENTS
===============================================================
Acknowledgements and Cautions 5
Preface 8
Part 1: A Day in China – What Time Is It? 9
Chapter 1: The Beginnings of Timekeeping 10
Chapter 2: The Twelve Earthly Branches 13
Chapter 3: The Five Night Watches 19
Chapter 4: The Huáinánzǐ 23
Chapter 5: The Hundred-System 27
Chapter 6: The 96-kè System 31
Chapter 7: Tiny Slices of Time 35
Chapter 8: Buddhist Units of Time 39
Chapter 9: Folk Methods 41
Chapter 10: Early Sundials 47
Chapter 11: Later Sundials 52
Chapter 12: Telling Time Underground 57
Chapter 13: Water Clocks 60
Chapter 14: The First Water Clocks 63
Chapter 15: The Double Pot Floating Arrow Water Clock 67
Chapter 16: Zhang Héng’s Improved Water Clock 71
Chapter 17: Yī Xíng’s Lotus Water Clock 78
Chapter 18: Shěn Kuo’s Improved Water Clock 84
Chapter 19: Sū Sòng’s Water Clock Tower 88
Chapter 20: The Sands of Time 93
Chapter 21: The Five-Wheel Hourglass 97
Chapter 22: Incense Clocks 100
Part 2: A Year in China – What Day Is It? 107
Chapter 23: Calendar Challenges 108
Chapter 24: The Cycles of the Moon 112
Chapter 25: The 28 Lunar Mansions 116
Chapter 26: Naming the Months 121
Chapter 27: Leap Months 126
Chapter 28: The 24 Solar Terms 130
Chapter 29: Calendars and Almanacs 136
Chapter 30: Evolution of Calendars 139
Chapter 31: Reading an Almanac 150
Chapter 32: Patterns in the Stars 156
Chapter 33: The Structure of Heaven 163
Chapter 34: What’s Today’s Date? 170
Chapter 35: The Ten Heavenly Stems 175
Chapter 36: Combining Two Systems 179
Chapter 37: Using the Stems and Branches 183
Chapter 38: Naming Dates 187
Chapter 39: Zhou Plans a Burial 190
Chapter 40: Luck and Fate 194
Chapter 41: Cheng Plans a Move 198
Chapter 42: The Twelve Day Officers 204
Chapter 43: The Twelve Duty Spirits 208
Chapter 44: Four Pillars and Eight Characters 212
Chapter 45: The Ten-Year Luck Cycles 215
Chapter 46: Lady Wu Plans a Family Visit 220
Part 3: An Epoch in China – What Era Is It? 223
Chapter 47: Reigns and Dynasties 226
Chapter 48: The Three Epochs 229
Chapter 49: The Great Year 234
Epilogue 239
Appendix 1: The Chinese Dynasties 242
Appendix 2: The Chinese Language 244
Appendix 3: Further Learning 249
Appendix 4: Chinese Glossary 251
Illustration Credits 259
About the Author 260
Notes 261
