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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