If you grew up around Chinese traditions, you have probably seen it: a thick, red-covered book kept near the family calendar, consulted before a wedding date was set, before a house move, before anything that felt like a beginning. That book is the Tung Shing 通勝 — the Chinese almanac. This guide explains what it is, how to read a single day’s entry, and why families still check it.
An almanac, not a horoscope
The Tung Shing 通勝 is a yearly almanac built on the traditional Chinese lunar-solar calendar. For every day of the year it lists what the day is considered suitable for 宜, what it discourages 忌, which zodiac sign it clashes with 沖, which hours run favourably, and a good deal more.
Two things make it different from a horoscope. First, it is about days, not people — tomorrow’s entry is the same for everyone who opens the book. Second, it does not claim to predict events. It describes the traditional character of a day, the way a weather report describes conditions. You still decide whether to sail.
The name itself is a small piece of history. The almanac was long called the tung shu 通書, the “book of everything”. In Cantonese, though, 書 (book) sounds like 輸 (to lose) — so sellers renamed it 通勝, “victory in everything”. Renaming a book so it cannot accidentally sound unlucky is very much the spirit of the tradition. You may also see it called the 黃曆, the yellow calendar, a name traditionally attributed to its roots in the imperial court calendars of old China.
Reading one day’s entry
Here is a realistic daily entry, of the kind you would find in any printed almanac — or on our free daily almanac page.
Take it line by line. 宜 (yí) means suitable — the day’s character supports these activities. 出行 is setting out: beginning a journey, a trip, a departure. 立券 is entering agreements: signing contracts, closing deals, putting your name to something binding. On this day, the tradition says, those things tend to go smoothly.
忌 (jì) means avoid. Here it lists 嫁娶 — weddings, literally “marrying and taking a bride”. This does not mean a wedding held today is doomed. It means the day’s character does not support one, the way you would not plan a garden party in the rainy season if another date were free. When you can choose, choose a better day — that is all the almanac asks. If you are planning one, our wedding dates for 2026 page lists the favourable days month by month.
沖 (chōng) is the clash. Every day carries one of the twelve earthly branches — the zodiac animals — and the sign sitting directly opposite is said to be clashed. This day clashes the Ox 牛. If you were born in an Ox year, tradition treats it as a day to keep your footprint small: fine for routine, not the day to launch, sign, or confront. It is a lay-low note, not a warning of harm.
The lucky hours come from the twelve traditional double-hours 時辰, each spanning two modern hours. Here the favourable window is 09:00–11:00 — the Snake hour 巳時. In practice this is the field people use most: if the meeting matters, put it inside the good window.
A full printed entry carries more still — the day officer 值日, one of twelve rotating “duty gods” that set the day’s overall verdict; the directions of the wealth and joy gods; the day’s own stem-and-branch name. Each is another lens on the same day, and each is explained wherever it appears in Xuan Lab.
How families actually use it
Weddings are the classic case. Families shortlist the days marked 嫁娶, strike out any that clash with either partner’s zodiac year, then pick the date that also works for the venue and the relatives. The personal-chart side of that process is its own subject — our guide to BaZi 八字, the Four Pillars explains it.
The same logic applies to other beginnings: moving into a home 入宅, opening a business 開市, breaking ground on construction 動土, setting out on a long trip 出行. In this tradition a beginning sets the tone for everything that follows it, so beginnings are what the almanac is consulted for.
Chinese New Year concentrates all of this into a fortnight. The almanac is consulted for the first day back at work 開工, the reopening of the shop, the first journey of the year — small ceremonies of starting well. Even families who ignore the book for eleven months tend to open it in the twelfth.
And for many households it is simply daily texture — a glance at the calendar page in the morning, the way you might glance at the sky. Not everyone who checks it believes the verdict. Plenty check it out of respect: for grandparents, for custom, for the quiet comfort of knowing everyone at the table is at ease with the chosen date.
Where the entries come from
The almanac is not rewritten each year by inspiration; it is calculated. The traditional calendar names every day with a pair of characters — a heavenly stem 天干 and an earthly branch 地支 — cycling through sixty combinations. Layered over that are the twelve day officers 十二值日 rotating in a fixed order, the five elements 五行, and the solar terms 節氣 that track the sun through the year. Rules handed down through the tradition map all of this onto the lists of suitable and unsuitable activities.
Different publishers apply somewhat different rules, which is why two printed almanacs occasionally disagree about the same day — more on that in the questions below. But the machinery underneath is shared arithmetic, old and public. And because it is arithmetic, it can be computed — which is what makes an English almanac possible at all.
How Xuan Lab reads it
Xuan Lab computes the almanac from the lunar-solar calendar directly, on your device — no scanned pages, no stored tables. Every field is translated and explained in plain English, with the Chinese kept alongside, because the characters are part of the tradition and worth learning to recognise.
It can also be personal where the paper book cannot: the app knows your zodiac year, so a clash day for you is flagged as yours rather than left for you to cross-check. The general day is free to read any time at today’s almanac, and the month’s good days are collected on the dates pages.
One thing we hold to throughout: the almanac describes tendencies, not guarantees. It is a tradition of paying attention to timing — at its best, a habit of moving through the week with a little more intention. We present it for cultural interest and self-reflection, never as a promise about outcomes.