Associate Professor and Doctor Le Thanh Lan of the Vietnam Institute of Science and Technology, said many calendars of various types including wall, pocket and desk calendars have misprinted the date for Tet (Lunar New Year), the largest public holiday in Vietnam. Some calendars printed the Tet on February 17 while others read February 18. The wrongful printing makes many people doubtful about the calendar science of Vietnam.
Mr. Nguyen Mau Tung, former director of the State Calendar Committee, said the difference in lunar dates is because calendar printers ignored the regulations set by the State Calendar Committee while employing the Chinese calendar to apply to the Vietnamese one.
In fact, both Vietnam and China use the same method to calculate the weather calendar (solar) but they use different rules to calculate the bissextile months and time zones. The time zone of Vietnam is GMT + 7 while the Chinese one is GMT + 8. The dissimilarity leads to the different in calculating the bissextile months.
Next year, Vietnam enjoys the Lunar New Year before China because the New Year’s Eve of Vietnam falls on a 29-day month while the Chinese one is in a 30-day month. The first month of the year in the Vietnamese calendar will have 30 days while the Chinese one has 29 days. Thus, the Vietnamese and Chinese calendars do not coincide until the first day of the second month of the lunar year.
Mr. Tran Tien Binh of the State Calendar Committee frankly admitted that his committee has not fulfilled the task. The committee should have announced the standardised calendar in a very long time ago when the standardised calendar was finished. However, the administrative procedure prevented the widespread announcement. As a result, this caused the misprint.
“If this issue is not resolved, a person will need two different calendars,” Mr. Ly Ba Toan, deputy general director of the Publication Department said. Publishers have registered for the publication of 116 million calendar blocks. However, the publication varies depending on the market demand, possibly 10-16 million blocks. Toan said, each year the department has to take into account 600 - 700 different calendar blocks; hence, the individual check is hardly possible. The publishers should apologise users and promise to resolve the mistake in the following year.
Mr. Tran Tan Ngo, director of the Vietnam Book Publishing Corp., who disagreed with Toan’s arguments, said the mistake on the calendar cannot satisfy users by a denial or an apology on mass media. Instead, we should put to and end the misprinted calendars. At present, Vietnam has 59 publishing houses; therefore, the product of this publishing house has mistake, we have products of others. The biggest matter is how to make the public feel secure.
Possibly, it is time to introduce hard resolutions. Publishers should destroy calendar blocks or any types of calendars immediately. The State Calendar Committee should introduce the Vietnamese standard calendar soon to terminate the long-lasting quarrels about the calendar.
Thi Van
Vietnamese
