Chinese Almanac Basics: Jianchu, Yellow Path, and Daily Do/Avoid

A Chinese almanac day, in the form this site uses, is three public signals plus a clash note. The day officer is one of twelve jianchu values. The path is yellow or black. The activity lists say what the traditional day marks as suitable and what it marks as unsuitable. Pick a Good Day turns those signals into a rank for an occasion you name. The rank is professional metaphysics offered as guidance. It describes the day’s traditional labels. It does not compel the day.

Key facts

The twelve day officers are Establish, Remove, Full, Balance, Stable, Initiate, Destruction, Danger, Success, Receive, Open, and Close.
Yellow path adds 2 to the score. Black path subtracts 2. Success or Open adds 2. Full adds 1. Close or Destruction subtracts 2.
Each suitable activity that matches your occasion adds 4. Each unsuitable match subtracts 5.
A custom occasion is scored from path and day officer only.
Medical lines in the traditional lists are left off the card. Care does not wait on an almanac.
One preview day is free.

The day officer

Jianchu is the twelve-day cycle of officers. It advances one step each civil day, in a sequence tied to the month’s solar frame. The English names on this site are fixed: Establish (建), Remove (除), Full (满), Balance (平), Stable (定), Initiate (执), Destruction (破), Danger (危), Success (成), Receive (收), Open (开), and Close (闭).

The names are job-words from the old calendar, not moods. Establish is the officer of setting something up. Remove is the officer of clearing. Full is abundance and, in some traditional notes, a day that is already packed. Balance is the level day. Stable is for settling. Initiate is for taking a matter in hand. Destruction is the breaking officer. Danger is the cautious officer. Success is completion. Receive is gathering in. Open is opening. Close is shutting.

Only four of those twelve change the numeric score. Success and Open add 2. Full adds 1. Close and Destruction subtract 2. Establish, Remove, Balance, Stable, Initiate, Danger, and Receive are still printed, because a zero-point officer is still the day’s name. A Danger day with a travel activity listed as suitable is a different card from an Open day with the same listing. The points capture the house weight. The name captures the traditional tone.

Why Full is only one point

Full sits between the officers that add more and the officers that add nothing. The score gives it a small lift, not the lift given to Success or Open. Traditional handbooks are full of extra comments about Full, some of them cautious about starting a marriage or a lawsuit on a day that is already “full.” This tool does not copy every handbook comment into the points. It records Full as +1 and leaves the rest of the day’s suitable and unsuitable lists to speak for the occasion. If those lists mark the activity unsuitable, the −5 outweighs the +1.

Why most officers are quiet in the score

A twelve-step cycle in which every step shouted would wash out the activity lists. The activity match is the largest weight on purpose: +4 or −5 per matching line. Path is a smaller, always-present weight. The officer adjustments are reserved for the steps this house treats as clearly open, clearly complete, clearly full, or clearly shut or broken. You can still prefer Establish for a founding date because of the name. The score will not add points for that preference unless you are also looking at suitable activities and path.

Yellow path and black path

Beside the officer, each day carries a spirit and a path. The path is the class: yellow (黄道) or black (黑道). Yellow-path spirits in the common set include Azure Dragon, Bright Hall, Golden Coffer, Heavenly Virtue, Jade Hall, and Life Governor. Black-path spirits include Heavenly Punishment, Vermilion Bird, White Tiger, Heavenly Prison, Black Tortoise, and Hook Array. The card names the spirit and the path. The score uses the path: +2 or −2.

Yellow does not mean lucky in the casual sense, and black does not mean doomed. They are two files in the almanac. A black-path day can still list your activity as suitable and can still outrank a yellow-path day whose lists mark the activity unsuitable, because −5 is larger than +2. Read the path as a bias, then read the lists.

The sha direction and the day’s clash are printed so you can see where the almanac says the day strikes. With a birth date, a clash against the birth year branch costs 6 and a clash against the birth day pillar costs 4. Without a birth date, the clash is still shown as information about the day itself. It does not become a personal penalty until a birth date is supplied.

Suitable and unsuitable

The traditional day carries two lists, often headed 宜 and 忌. Suitable is what the day is marked as fit for. Unsuitable is what it is marked as better avoided. The lists are long in a full almanac. They include rites, travel, construction, weddings, burials, contracts, and many household acts. This tool matches your occasion to a short set of those names and scores only the matches.

A day can list travel as suitable and construction as unsuitable. If you asked about travel, the construction line does not subtract. It may still appear among the things to avoid, so you see it. If you asked about a move, opening a business, moving house, and moving in are the names that can add or subtract. A custom occasion skips the activity match and keeps path and officer, because a purpose with no traditional name should not be forced onto “wedding” or “burial.”

Some lines in historical almanacs concern seeking a doctor, treatment, or acupuncture. Those lines are removed from the visible lists. They do not affect the rank. The site will not help you pick a day to delay care. If you need a clinician, the day officer is irrelevant.

The lists are not commands. They are the day’s traditional contents. A contract can be signed on a day the almanac calls unsuitable for agreements, and the signature is still a signature. The card’s job is to show the label before you choose, not to void the choice afterward.

How a card is assembled

For each civil date in the window, the engine reads the day pillar, the officer, the path and spirit, the suitable and unsuitable lists, the clash, and the sha direction. It adds the points described above. It sorts the window. The free page shows the first day. The prose under the score says why the occasion fit: the activity was listed as suitable, or as unsuitable, or as both, or as neither.

The year and month behind a birth date, if you add one, follow the solar rules used on the BaZi side for that limited purpose: the year branch is the year after Start of Spring, and the day pillar is the sexagenary day. The almanac day you are judging is itself a civil date with its own day pillar. The tool compares branches. It does not rebuild ten gods for every row.

A BaZi chart remains the place for the day master, the useful element, and ten-year steps. The almanac remains the place for “which of these dates.” Using both is coherent. Collapsing them into one number would hide which system said what.

Reading without the theater

Prefer the sentence on the card to a reused slogan. “Open, yellow path, travel listed as suitable” is a specific day. “The universe wants you to go” is not a reading of the almanac. The English glosses are there so a reader in the United States, the EU, or the English-speaking Gulf can see the category without pretending the category is Western astrology or a lucky number.

Shelf prices for the ranked list are $12.99 a month, $29.99 every three months, and $89.99 a year. The free preview day does not require an account. An email magic link can save a reading and does not charge.

What this is not

Not a full traditional tongshu with every rite, taboo, and regional school printed.
Not a medical calendar. Treatment lines are omitted and do not score.
Not a moral judgment of black-path days, and not a promise attached to yellow-path days.
Not a lucky-number or manifestation practice.
Not a BaZi luck cycle. Officers and paths are almanac signals.
Not a product you can pay for today. One day of the window is the free preview.