The Chinese solar calendar is less familiar than the Chinese lunar calendar, which is the one that gets all the press during Chinese New Year celebrations. But I find the solar calendar more useful because it divides the year into 24 mini-seasons with names descriptive of what’s going on in the natural world.

These mini-seasons, each of which lasts for 15 or 16 days, are called solar terms, or more poetically, “joints and breaths.” The year begins with the solar term called “Spring Begins,” which occurs halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox — on February 4 in the year 2000.

Using dates based on Universal Time — the time at the Greenwich Meridian — to avoid the confusion that can be caused by different time zones and the international date line, the solar terms for 2000 are: