This FAQ describes the contents of the file: "china_chron.ZIP" which can be accessed from the CHGIS working papers downloads page.

See also Lex Berman's Chinese Reign Periods Search Engine.

The ZIP archive contains two EXCEL files and one TAB DELIMITED TEXT file. Each file is in UTF-8 encoding. The files are:
china_chron.xls [table of reign periods]
china_chron_fields.xls [data dictionary describing field names and their contents]
china_chron.txt [tab delimited text file of reign periods]

The reign periods table lists all the nianhao between 222 BCE and 1911 CE and is checked against the chronology found in the appendix of

"Ci Hai, 1965 nian xin bian ben" (3 Volumes) v.3 p.4130-4173
Hong Kong (Kowloon): Zhonghua shuju, 1979.

Complete sources are listed in the README file.

Each record contains the following information in Chinese Characters only (with separate columns for Simplified and Complex characters):

• Period Name (such as Han, or Nanbei Chao)
• Sub-Period Name (such as Bei Wei, or Nanchao Liang)
• Reign Period (nianhao)
• Given Name of Ruler (xingming)
• Begin and End date of the reign period (in Western Calendar years, using negative numbers for BCE)