Calendars Without Conflict: Ethnographic and Theoretical Perspectives on Temporal Plurality in Chinese Religious Life

The traditional Chinese calendar and the modernized Gregorian calendar are commonly framed as representing conflicting ontologies of time, a tension often taken as emblematic of modernity itself. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Taiwanese and mainland Chinese communities, this paper challenges that by examining how multiple calendrical systems are enacted simultaneously in religious and social practice. It compares the qualitative, cosmologically saturated temporality encoded in the traditional Chinese calendar with the homogeneous, empty temporality implied by the Gregorian calendar. Ethnographic findings show that interlocutors routinely mobilize each calendar for distinct purposes through religious and quasi-religious techniques such as divination, auspicious date selection, and ritual timing. Rather than producing conflict, calendrical plurality enables meaningful engagement with pasts, presents, and futures across multiple temporal scales. The paper argues that modern religious life need not be defined by temporal rupture, but can instead be characterized by stable, reflexive navigation of plural temporal ontologies.