Time, Days of The Week, and Dates in Chinese
Well, it's about time to talk about time!
So pretty commonly in conversation, the time and date come up. It is a PRETTY important topic, especially if you don't want to be late. Learning how to tell time and dates in Chinese is an extremely important skill to learn.
So, let's dive into what you need to know in order to do so!
Time and Clocks
General Time Concepts
Before we get into the topic of telling specific hours and minutes, let's first talk about more general concepts of time during the day in Chinese. Here is a list:
凌晨 (líng chén) - early hours, typically from 12 am to dawn.
黎明 (lí míng) - dawn.
早晨 (zǎo chén) /早上 (zǎo shàng) - morning, typically from dawn to 8-9 am.
上午 (shàng wǔ) - morning, from 8-9 am to 12 pm.
中午 (zhōng wǔ) - noon, around 12 pm.
下午 (xià wǔ) - afternoon.
傍晚 (bàng wǎn)/黄昏 (huáng hūn) - dusk.
晚上 (wǎn shàng) - evening or night, after dusk before bedtime.
半夜 (bàn yè)/午夜 (wǔ yè) - midnight.
深夜 (shēn yè) - late at night, can be between any time between 12 am and dawn. Note this is a similar time frame to 凌晨, although the latter means early hours.
夜晚 (yè wǎn) - night, this is a general term, generally from dusk to dawn (when it's dark) is all 夜晚.
There are many time-related words in Chinese, the list above provides the commonly used ones. Of course, there are more words like this, but with the ones mentioned, you can indicate any time during the day with ease.
Clocks
Before we get into telling time in clocks, let's learn some terms first.
小时 (xiǎo shí) - hour. Sometimes 小 can be omitted.
分钟 (fēn zhōng) - minute. Sometimes 钟 is omitted.
秒钟 (miǎo zhōng) - second. Sometimes 钟 is omitted.
These are the terms used for telling a period of time. For example, an hour is 一小时; 3 minutes is 3分钟; 10 seconds is 10秒钟.
Combinations of them can be used as well. Some examples are given below.
1 hour 20 min 30 sec would be 一小时20分30秒.
15 min 40 sec would be 15分40秒.
For telling time in clocks, the terms are similar but slightly different.
点 (diǎn)/时 (shí) - hour (similar to “o'clock”). 点 is used more commonly, and 时 is more formal.
分 (fēn) - minute.
秒 (miǎo) - second, often not included when telling clocks.
Therefore, the general form for clocks in Chinese is hr 时 (点) mi 分 se 秒.
It's common to use the 24-hour clock to tell the time in China. It is used in official listings, such as train and plane schedules. It is also used during store hours and on TV station program guides.
However, although Chinese people are used to looking at clocks in a 24-hour style, they would still speak in a 12-hour manner.
For example, when it's 2 pm, the 24-hour clock will be 14:00. To say this in Chinese, you would say:
“现在是下午两点了。” (It's now 2 o'clock in the afternoon.)
Note that 点 (diǎn) means “o'clock”. But a more accurate translation would be the “:” in 14:00 or hour.
This is important because unlike in English, you would only use “o'clock” when it's at the full hour. But 点 is always used in Chinese. Examples are as follows:
凌晨3点45 (分) - 3:45 am or 3:45.
上午10点半 - 10:30 am or 10:30.
晚上8点20 (分) - 8:20 pm or 20:20.
分 (fēn) for minutes is sometimes included. This is used similarly to 点, but 分 itself can be omitted.
However, when it's at the full hour, you only need to say x 点 (x o'clock). In addition, when it's right at a half hour, you could use 半 (bàn), meaning half. So 10:30 would be 10点半. Of course, you can also say 10点30 (分) instead, but obviously not as simple as 10点半.
Sometimes, but less commonly, 刻 (kè) is also for 15 minutes (a quarter-hour). For example, 9:15 would be 9点一刻, and 9:45 would be 9点三刻. But for some reason, 一刻 is used more often than 三刻. That is to say, you can use 9点一刻 or 9点15 (分) for 9:15 interchangeably, while for 9:45, it's more common to say 9点45 (分) than 9点三刻。
Note that in oral Chinese, 点 is typically the word used for hours. But if you want to express time in a formal way, you may want to use 时 (shí) in place of 点. Here 时 means hour as well, but it also means time in general. Its usage here is the same as 点 but only used in a formal manner and not as commonly used as 点 in everyday life.
So far, we've talked about 点/时 - hour, and 分 - minute. There's also another time-related word, 秒 (miǎo), for seconds. For obvious reasons, in our daily life, seconds are generally not included when telling time.
But if you do need to include information for seconds, just add it after minutes. For example:
7:20:15, in Chinese, would be 7点 (时) 20分15秒.
Note that here 分 cannot be omitted.
Something else to keep in mind is that people often round up the numbers when talking about time. This is true for Chinese as well - people would typically round up to the closest half hour (or round number).
So, if it's 12:03, you can say it's 12点. If it's 5:28, you can say it's 5点半. And if it's 8:17, you can say either 8点一刻 or 8点20.
Days of The Week
Telling the days of the week is rather simple and straightforward in Chinese, there are a few common words used for “week”:
周 (zhōu), 星期 (xīng qī), and 礼拜 (lǐ bài).
These words generally follow the same rules - simply by adding a number to the end to represent each day of the week, and they are interchangeable. However, keep in mind that 礼拜 originally means worship, and is less commonly used for “week” compared to the other two words.
Unlike in Western culture, where the week starts on Sunday. In Chinese culture, the week starts on Monday. That is why the first day of the week, 周一/星期一/礼拜一 is Monday, and the last day is Sunday. The table below shows how to say each day in Chinese.
| Chinese | English |
| 周一/星期一/礼拜一 | Monday |
| 周二/星期二/礼拜二 | Tuesday |
| 周三/星期三/礼拜三 | Wednesday |
| 周四/星期四/礼拜四 | Thursday |
| 周五/星期五/礼拜五 | Friday |
| 周六/星期六/礼拜六 | Saturday |
| 周日/星期日/礼拜日 周天/星期天/礼拜天 | Sunday |
From Monday to Saturday, it's quite straightforward - just add a number of 1 through 6 to the end of 周/星期/礼拜, and that's it. But do keep in mind that for days of the week, the Chinese characters for numbers are used. Do NOT use Arabic numbers here.
What's different is Sunday. Instead of adding a number, 日 (rì) or 天 (tiān) is used here. They both mean “day”, while 日 also means “the Sun”, and 天 also means “sky”. In that sense, for Sunday, both Chinese and English have the exact same meaning.
This also explains why 礼拜 is used for “week”, even though it originally means worship. Interestingly enough, it actually comes from a Western culture where Sunday is the traditional day of worship, as 礼拜日 or 礼拜天 literally means “the day of worship”.
Dates
To talk about dates, let's first look at a few basic words needed.
年 (nián) - year.
月 (yuè) - month.
日 (rì)/号 (hào) - day. Both are commonly used, but 号 is used casually and 日 is more formal.
Different countries have their own standard time and date notation. For time notation, everyone generally uses the same universal format, as we mentioned above - hr:min:sec.
However, date notation varies based on the country. For example, although the ISO 8601 standard notation is yyyy-mm-dd, America uses mm/dd/yyyy or mm/dd/yy, and the UK uses dd mmmm yyyy or dd/mm/yy.
For China, the notation comes as yyyy 年 m 月 d 日, with a similar order compared to the ISO standard. A few examples of dates are given below.
2016年3月28日 (号) = 2016-03-28
2007年5月2日 (号) = 2007-05-02
2019年7月23日 (号) = 2020-07-23
2022年11月29日 (号) = 2022-11-29
As you can see, the Chinese language doesn't add 0 before the number if there is only one digit for the date (month and day). So even though others usually would say 06/03 for June 3rd, in Chinese this would be 6月3日. Note that no 0 is added before 6 or 3.
Also, for the day, you could use either 日 or 号 at the end. But keep in mind that 日 is more formal than 号.
Lunar Calendar
Although nowadays, everyone uses the Gregorian calendar (the normal Western calendar), some cultures keep their traditional calendars. This is true for Chinese culture as well.
The traditional Chinese calendar is called the Lunar calendar. But in actuality, it's a lunisolar calendar, combining both the phase of the Moon and the time of the solar year (the position of the Sun in the Earth's sky).
In Chinese, this lunisolar calendar is called 农历 (nóng lì), which means agricultural or farming calendar, and sometimes also called 阴历 (yīn lì) based on the concept of 阴阳 (yīn yáng) - yin and yang.
[Note: a simple explanation here is that 阴 (yin) stands for the Moon and 阳 (yang) stands for the Sun. Obviously, the concept of 阴阳 is a complex topic by itself.]
The Chinese Lunar calendar is not as commonly used as the Gregorian calendar, or 公历 (gōng lì) in Chinese, as that's the universal standard. However, people still refer to the Lunar calendar for traditional holidays of the Chinese culture.
Some of these holidays include:
春节 (chūn jié) - Spring Festival or the Chinese New Year, on the 1st day of the 1st month.
元宵节 (yuán xiāo jié) - Lantern Festival, on the 15th day of the 1st month.
中秋节 (zhōng qiū jié) - Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Festival, on the 15th day of the 8th month.
端午节 (duān wǔ jié) - Dragon Boat Festival, on the 5th day of the 5th month.
七夕 (qī xī) - Qixi Festival (similar to Valentine's Day), on the 7th day of the 7th month.
Traditional Terms for Time
This is a more advanced topic, if you're new to Chinese, there's no need to read this part. But if you are interested in traditional Chinese culture and/or Chinese history and literature, it is absolutely useful to learn about the traditional terms in Chinese for time.
In ancient China, a day is divided into 12 parts, each part is one 时辰 (shí chén). This means that 1 时辰 = 2 小时 (2 hours). Starting from 12 am, we count from the first 时辰 until the 12th 时辰 to 10 pm.
Ancient Chinese people use 十二地支 (the twelve Earthly Branches) for each 时辰. This is actually where the 十二生肖 (Chinese zodiac) is from, starting from rat to pig, the twelve animals can be considered mascots/representations of the twelve Earthly Branches.
We have a simple lesson on the Chinese zodiac in our graded reader app. If you want to learn and practice your Mandarin skills while reading about this piece of Chinese culture, feel free to check it out!
In addition, 十二地支 are also used for months in the Lunar calendar as well.
The table below compares 十二地支 to modern times, lunar months, and the twelve zodiacs.
| 地支 Earthly Branch | Modern Hour | Lunar Month | 生肖 Zodiac |
| 子 (zǐ) | 12 - 2 am | 十一月 - 11th | 鼠 (shǔ), rat |
| 丑 (chǒu) | 2 - 4 am | 腊月 - 12th | 牛 (niú), ox |
| 寅 (yín) | 4 - 6 am | 正月 - 1st | 虎 (hǔ), tiger |
| 卯 (mǎo) | 4 - 8 am | 二月 - 2nd | 兔 (tù), rabbit |
| 辰 (chén) | 8 - 10 am | 三月 - 3rd | 龙 (lóng), dragon |
| 巳 (sì) | 10 am - 12 pm | 四月 - 4th | 蛇 (shé), snake |
| 午 (wǔ) | 12 - 2 pm | 五月 - 5th | 马 (mǎ), horse |
| 未 (wèi) | 2 - 4 pm | 六月 - 6th | 羊 (yáng), goat |
| 申 (shēn) | 4 - 6 pm | 七月 - 7th | 猴 (hóu), monkey |
| 酉 (yǒu) | 6 - 8 pm | 八月 - 8th | 鸡 (jī), rooster |
| 戌 (xū) | 8 - 10 pm | 九月 - 9th | 狗 (gǒu), dog |
| 亥 (hài) | 10 pm - 12 am | 十月 - 10th | 猪 (zhū), pig |
The topic of ancient Chinese terms for time and calendar is in fact quite complex, which deserves its own article. Here we only introduced the most basic ideas.
If you are interested, here is another article that details the Chinese zodiac and traditional calendar including Earthly Branches, Heavenly Stems, seasons, solar terms as well as other Chinese astrology concepts.
Have fun reading!
