Happy 2547!

IF you missed some friends in your gift list during the last holidays, you have until this Thursday to make up for it. It's the lunar new year, celebrated by the Chinese as Xin Nien, the Japanese as Oshogatsu, the Koreans as Seol and the Vietnamese as Tet (this year minus the chickens).

The lunar year celebrations remind us of the diversities of calendars we have across cultures. In this age of globalization, the diversities can have serious implications, as we now face a bewildering variety of food products and medicines from all over the world, often with expiration or "Best Before" dates printed out according to calendars very different from our own.

As far as I know, the lunar calendar isn't used for expiration dates, but you still have to deal with several dating systems. We use the American system, where dates are written out month, day, year. The European system has the day ahead of the month so if you have a food package from Britain with an expiration date of "12.1.2004," don't think you have until December 1, 2004. The food actually expired on the 12th of January, 2004.

The European system isn't too confusing as compared with the other variations. Products coming in from Taiwan (instant noodles, for example) will sometimes give the expiration date as the year of the Chinese Republic, which began in 1911 when the Qing dynasty was overthrown. Thus, if you see an expiration date "12.1.93," it doesn't mean the product expired in 1993. The date refers to the 93rd year of the Republic, which means 2004. You get that by adding 93 to 1911.

And the "12.1"? Is it December 1 as in the American system, or January 12 as in the British system... or, horrors, does it refer to the Chinese lunar calendar? As I mentioned earlier, the lunar calendar isn't used for these expiration dates. Most likely it's the American system, but don't count on it. Just make sure you eat the stuff some time in 2004.

An added caveat here: products from Taiwan and the People's Republic of China will often give a date of manufacturing, and then indicate that the expiration is one, two or three years after.

Let's move now to Japan. I have in front of me a package of bean cake given to my father by a Japanese business partner. The expiration date reads "15.12.29". Common sense tells us it can't be December 15, 1929. Nope, the Japanese use the nengo system, dates reckoned according to the current emperor's reign. Emperor Hirohito's reign was called Showa (Enlightenment and Harmony), year 1 being 1926 and ending with his death in 1989. Hirohito was succeeded by Akihito, whose reign has been named Heisei, meaning "achieving peace."

The "15.12.29" actually means December 29 of the 15th year Hesei. With year 1 of Heisei being 1989, year 15 would be 2004. Alas, the delicious bean cakes had a very short shelf life.

Math teachers should have enough ideas now to practice their students' addition and subtraction. But I'm not quite through yet. I did want to point out how calendars are religiously based. The Christian Gregorian calendar is divided into BC (before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, the year of the Lord), presumably based on Christ's birth. (Note though that by reviewing historical events and biblical accounts, scholars have estimated that Christ was actually born in the year 4, Before Christ. Figure that out.)

The Islamic year is different, based on the hegira, or Mohammed's migration from Mecca to Madinah. The Islamic year is based on lunar cycles and is fixed at 354 days per year. The new Islamic year will be 1424 AH (year of the hegira).

My favorite calendar is the Buddhist one, which is institutionalized in Thailand, used in official documents, announcements of conferences, newspaper banners and, yes, food and drug expiration dates. The Buddhist year is based on the birth of the religion's founder, Gautama Buddha, born almost five centuries before Christ.

I have, for example, a bottle of a popular Thai herbal medicine preparation used for colds, Fa Ta Lai Jone (Andrographis paniculata). The bottle has this intriguing expiration date: 22-07-47. Does that mean I can put the bottle in a time capsule and bury it, so that some archaeologist who discovers it half a millennium from now can still use the medicine?

Nope. The "47" refers to the year 2547 BE (which means Buddhist Era), which corresponds to our 2004. The Thais use the European notation system for months and days so "22-07" is the 22nd of July. The herbal capsules are therefore good until the 22nd of July of this year.

It can be a nightmare deciphering the BC and AD and BE and AH. Because of the diversity of religious calendars, a more neutral "CE" or "Common Era" is sometimes used to refer to the Gregorian calendar, which is the most widely used today. This year would therefore be 2004 CE. The era before Christ is noted as "BCE" or "Before Common Era."

Confused? Archaeologists, biological anthropologists, geologists and other scientists dealing with large chunks of time dispense with all these divisions by using "BP" or "before the present." Tabon Man, for example, the oldest human fossil found in the Philippines, is dated to be about 16,000 BP, meaning 16,000 years before the present. So next time you want to impress someone, when they ask you what year you were born in, you can claim, as I would, "24 BP" or 24 years before the present.

Let me end by greeting you a happy lunar new year. Please, please don't greet me "Kung Hei Fat Choy" because that's Cantonese, which is hardly used by the ethnic Chinese in the Philippines. The safest greeting is "Gung xi fa cai" (pronounced gung si fa chai) in Putonghua, China's national language.

If you missed January 22 as well (as some of my readers might have, getting their Inquirer a day or two late because they're out in a more remote area), you still have the Islamic New Year, which falls, this CE year, on February 22. And for others reading this article on the Internet, a few weeks late (as my sister does, in Canada), there's still the Thai new year, called Songkran, which isn't till April 13. May as well keep greeting people good luck. We'll need it this election year.

Comments to miguel@pinoykasi.net