Parents-to-be very often want to know the gender of the unborn child. Many people try to plan in advance not only the date of birth, but also the gender, resorting to both scientifically proven medical methods and traditional folk. These include the ancient Chinese calendar, which has been in use for thousands of years.
About seven centuries ago, in one of the temples located near Beijing, a calendar was found, according to which the Chinese, expecting a child, determined its gender. According to legend, it was created during the reign of the Oing dynasty, when boys were more desirable children for parents. The popularity of this calendar, which was subsequently transferred to the Beijing Institute of Sciences, is great at the present time due to its ease of use and, as the Chinese themselves believe, high efficiency.
How the calendar works
Determining the gender of a baby according to the Chinese calendar is quite simple. You just need to determine the age of the mother of the unborn child (from 18 to 45 years) and the month of conception of the child. Next, find the intersection of the lines in the proposed ancient Chinese table with the data of the woman's age (vertically) and the month of conception (horizontally). Accordingly, the meanings of the letters D - girl, M - boy.
This raises the question: how seriously can you take the results of such a test? The answers of Chinese scientists on this matter differ: according to some data, the accuracy of predictions is 70-75%, according to others (it is to them that the Institute of Sciences refers) - up to 98%. Meanwhile, the Chinese, who have long been facing an acute demographic issue, use such a calendar quite actively.
In any case, you can check the calendar for its reliability on yourself (or on close and well-known people); you only need to know exactly in what month the child was conceived (i.e., take into account the fact that the child could have been born earlier than the due time).
Determining the age of a woman according to the lunar calendar
If you want to use the ancient Chinese table, it should be borne in mind that the age of a woman in this case should be determined according to the Xia lunar calendar. The fact is that the ancient Chinese considered the beginning of life not to be the birth of a person, but the moment of his conception, therefore, when working with the table, it is necessary to add 1 year to the actual age. Although there are some subtleties here, since in fact the Chinese add 1 year not to the date of birth, but to the date of the new calendar year - in China this is one of the days between January 22 and February 22.
Experts familiar with the calendar agree that nowadays this method of determining the sex of a child can be more perceived as entertainment. Be that as it may, to use the ancient Chinese methodology or not is everyone's personal business. But all the same, one should not place very high hopes on the veracity of the method.
