OK, I need to bitch about old timey time keeping

[cashew]

So like archaic Chinese is complicated. I get it. But for fuck's sake, writers, 时辰 = 2 hours. Waiting for "半个时辰" is not half an hour, it's a full hour! Practicing for "两个时辰" is actually practicing a whole four hours. That's an entire morning. Stop treating it like a lunch break!!

The other thing is that 点 in archaic Chinese does not mean the same thing as modern Chinese. 点 is a time unit and is equal to 24 minutes. So 两点 is the equivalent of 48 minutes, not two o'clock. Geh.

Also stop mixing 点 and 时. 点 is used in terms of time keeping when referring to 更 (rotation), wherein each rotation (2 hours) is split into 5 units called 点. A night is split into 五更 (five rotations), so 三更两点 would be 11:48pm in modern time. 时 is used to split the entire day (24 hours) into 12 (hence one 时辰 is 2 hours). If you want to get down to the half hour, you need to use the 刻 measurement, which splits each day into 100 parts, the equivalent of 14.4 minutes. By the Qing dynasty, time got re-adjusted so that 刻 = 15 minutes.

In terms of writing "ye olde novels", this is the standard used. So, you'd indicate time by writing out something like 午时二刻 (11:30am in modern time). But if it's night time, the people will likely use the 更 system rather than the 时 system, although at special times it's about 50/50 (aka 三更 = 子时, and either one could be used).

Time keeping was very rough back in the day. People used things like rooster calling, sunrise, sunset, 十二时辰 (12 hourly divisions) and 五更/五鼓 (five drums - because time was beaten out at night since there's no sundial) to get a general sense of time.

(Also, ye olde people's daily rhythm is different from modern people. The day starts at around 5am, aka 卯时, and people are in bed by 7pm, aka 戌时 or 一更.)

I thought this stuff was common knowledge given the preponderance of period dramas, but apparently there are still writers out there who have no idea how ye olde time keeping works.

Comments

[tanithryudo]

Are you seeing CN or EN works where this is misused? In my experience, EN translations of CN period works tend to do the research and get the archaic timing stuff mostly right.

[cashew]

CN fic. 😭

Kids don't know anything these days...

[tanithryudo]

LOL, wow. Ok, then there's no excuse. Kids these days. :p

[cashew]

Yeah, it's kind of shocking. I mean I know I shouldn't have high hopes, but pulp culture entertainment is real shit these days...