Recently I made some Asian friends in Western countries, who as I found out, either don’t know their birthdays or quite often just know their approximate birthday. Thanks to Minh – a British Vietnamese, who lived in England his whole life and didn’t know his birthday for 37 years, I realized this was more common than I thought. I started researching to help him, as at How to Date a Foreigner, I’m fascinated with everything from personality to culture and identity. After some research, I found a way with a Chinese Calendar Converter, that takes 2 steps.
Why some people don’t know their birthday?
There are of course countless reasons and this Chinese calendar converter might not provide a solution to all. The people I met are Asians who (or whose parents) immigrated to a Western country when they were young. Usually during or soon after a war (eg. Vietnam war).
They were born in Asia where their country used the Chinese lunar calendar system.
When they arrived in the US or Europe, the Western country used an approximate date as they didn’t know their exact conversion to Western birthday. This is exactly what happened to Minh.
In other cases, like one of my Japanese friend’s father, he was born during the war. If I recall well, they were in a shelter when he was born. During the war, they lost track of the days and they don’t know his either.
As birthdays are such a big part of someone’s identity in Western countries and there is so much emphasis on birthday celebrations, I hope this blog post helps you find out yours.
Chinese Calendar Converter – to find out yours in 2 steps
A really good Chinese Calendar Converter I found is accessible here
If you know your date of birth based on the Chinese lunar calendar, the process is very simple. Just enter it and convert it.
However, the tricky part comes, when like for Minh, the Western country gave an approximate date based on the Gregorian (western) calendar.
So not only he didn’t know his date of birth, but the year in the Chinese lunar calendar is also different from the Gregorian calendar. Therefore we had to find the Chinese year first (converting back from the western calendar). Let’s look at an example:
Step 1: Western to Chinese Calendar Conversion
If you know based on Chinese lunar calendar, you were born on the 10th of the 1st month (in 1988), your Western country might have converted this to 28th Feb 1988.
Now, if you want to convert it from the Chinese lunar calendar as : 10th of the 1st month 1988, it will give you an error. This is because the year is wrong.
So first, to find out the Chinese year, enter it into the Western to Chinese Calendar Converter as shown below and press Convert Calendar.
This will give you the Chinese lunar calendar date as below and you can see the Chinese year: 4686
Step 2: Chinese To Western Calendar Conversion
Now you need to do a 2nd step.
Go back to do another conversion and convert your Chinese date of birth using the Chinese year (you got in the 1st step) eg. 10th of the 1st month 4686 to get your Western birthday:
Now you have your correct Western date of birth: 26th February 1988
Their website also has a Chinese Age Calculator – if you are curious of yours, you can access it here
(Warning: it makes you older! 😉 )
Hope this article helped to find out your Western birthday.
I’d love to hear your stories, why you didn’t know your date of birth. Comment below to let me know. I’ll thoroughly enjoy reading them!
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I like the concept you’re trying to explain. But I think you need more examples, more details as to why you’re doing the things you’re doing.
For example, example the point of finding the Chinese year just flew over my head. Second, you may want to expand into how we may need to calculate leap months.
One thing I’ve noticed is that some Chinese are clearly aware of their Western birthday, because technically, if they follow a Western calendar, this day remains static (so to speak, correct me if I’m wrong).
Yet, their lunar date can jump around, as we know, some chinese years have leap months, etc, things shift. Some Chinese may not actually follow their Lunar birthday.
Then again, there are some that like to remember both.
But then there are those who only follow the lunar calendar and have no idea of their western birthdate.
They may be curious what that date is, maybe they plan to study abroad and have more western friends, etc, whatever the case, they are intimately familiar with their lunar calendar and may be able to easily convert to the western birthday.
But a westerner with little experience in the Lunar calendar will have a hell of a time converting a western birthdate, to its lunar counterpart on any given year.
Why would a westerner want to do this?
In order to properly predict someone’s lunar birthday on any given year.
Ok, so maybe some of what I said above is already incorrect, so let me put it another way.
Let me give you an example.
Let’s say you have a Chinese friend, they say “today is my birthday!”.
Yay, let’s celebrate. A typical friend would probably record that date on their phone calendar in order to be able to wish them, or surprise them on the following year, right?
The problem is that the Chinese friend might have said today is their birthday in Lunar calendar, unbeknownst to me.
So how do we go about an convert things in a way that I could enter a western, yearly recurring date on my calendar, that would accurately let me wish that friend a happy birthday on the following year?
Is this not possible? Am I thinking about this the wrong way?
Suffice it to say, calendar conversion webpages confuse the heck out of me, and I feel like I’m missing a few basic points to get this right.
So back to the example:
Friend says “today is my birthday”.
You ask, is that lunar birthday?
“YES!”
Ok, from here, trust me, you don’t want to have a Chinese person try to explain the lunar system to you, I honestly don’t think it’s possible to do that easily, quickly and by the time you start to understand some concepts, you’re far from finished and you may have already frustrated your Chinese friend enough to want to end the topic.
So let’s continue with the example of a conversion that explains things clearly, and mind you, I am asking for your help, not saying I actually know, even after having read your website.
So back to friend saying it’s their lunar birthday today, and from your point of view with your western calendar, today’s date is April 14, 2023.
Keep in mind that if your friend is back in China, they’re typically one day ahead, so adjust as necessary, it may actually be April 15th to them, very important.
So let’s say they are actually on April 15, 2023 and it’s their lunar birthday.
So far so good right?
Next, I think you need to know their birth year in order to make a valid conversion.
Do i need to know their birth year or not?
Let’s say they’re gracious enough or familiar enough with you to tell you their age, let’s say 20 for simplicity, so they were born in 2003.
But they were not born on April 15, 2003, right?
Because April 15, 2023 calculated back to 2003 in the lunar calendar, does not necessarily end up in April 15, 2003.
And so I’m not even sure how to proceed at that point.
Question: Am I wrong in assuming that once you’ve converted a lunar birthdate to a western birthdate correctly, that you can then accurately use that date to calculate their lunar birthdate on any subsequent year?
Yet, I would not be able to simply enter April 15, 2024 on a Western to Lunar converter, I think it does not give me an accurate lunar birthdate this way.
Any help would be appreciated.
CT