Editing Earthly Branches (section)

== Directions ==
[[Image:China 24 cardinal directions.svg|thumb|upright=1.2|The 24 cardinal directions assigned to Earthly Branches and Heavenly Stems, with south (red) placed at the top according to the traditional convention]]
Though Chinese has words for the four [[cardinal direction]]s, Chinese sailors and [[astronomer]]s preferred using the 12 directions of the Earthly Branches, analogous to the use of ''o'clock'' for directions by English-speaking pilots. Since twelve points were not enough for sailing, 12 midpoints were added. Instead of combining two adjacent direction names, they assigned new names: for the four diagonal directions, appropriate trigram names of ''[[I Ching]]'' were used. For the rest, Heavenly Stems 1–4 and 7–10 were used. According to the [[Wuxing (Chinese philosophy)|five elements]] theory, east is assigned to wood, and the Stems of wood are {{zhc|c=甲|p=jiǎ}} and {{zhc|c=乙|p=yǐ}}. Thus, they were assigned clockwise to the two adjacent points of the east.

Mariners like [[Zheng He]] ({{floruit}}&nbsp;1405–1433) used 48-point compasses.  An additional midpoint was called by a combination of its two closest basic directions, such as {{zhi|丙午}} ({{tlit|zh|bǐngwǔ}}; 172.5°), the midpoint between {{zhi|丙}} ({{tlit|zh|bǐng}}; 165°) and {{zhi|午}} ({{tlit|zh|wǔ}}; 180°).