The days of the week in Chinese might be the most logical calendar on Earth. Take the word for week, xingqi (星期), and add a number: Monday is xingqi yi (星期一), literally "week-one," Tuesday is xingqi er ("week-two"), and so on through Saturday. If you can count, you already know the week.
There is exactly one exception, and one delightful bonus: the months are numbered the same way. Master the numbers first and this whole article takes about five minutes.
Building the week from numbers
Here is the full week. Notice that the pattern never breaks from Monday to Saturday — it is xingqi plus one, two, three, right up the count.
| Day | Chinese | Pinyin |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 星期一 | xingqi yi |
| Tuesday | 星期二 | xingqi er |
| Wednesday | 星期三 | xingqi san |
| Thursday | 星期四 | xingqi si |
| Friday | 星期五 | xingqi wu |
| Saturday | 星期六 | xingqi liu |
| Sunday | 星期天 | xingqi tian |
If you have not met the numbers yet, our Chinese numbers guide takes ten minutes and unlocks all of this.
Sunday, the one exception
You might expect Sunday to be "week-seven." It is not. Sunday breaks the pattern and uses tian (天), "sky" or "day," giving xingqi tian — "week-day" in the heavenly sense.
You will also hear xingqi ri (星期日) for Sunday, using ri (日), the more formal word for "sun" or "day." It means exactly the same thing; xingqi tian is what you will hear in conversation, xingqi ri is a touch more written and formal.
Three words for "week"
Chinese offers three interchangeable words for "week," and all three take the same numbers, so learning one teaches you all.
- xingqi (星期) — the standard, safe everywhere.
- zhou (周) — common in writing and business; Monday is zhou yi (周一).
- libai (礼拜) — casual and warm, especially common in the south; Monday is libai yi (礼拜一).
Pick xingqi to start, and simply recognize the other two when they float by. They are the same machine with a different label on the front.
The months work the same way
Here is the bonus that makes Chinese dates almost too easy: months are just a number plus yue (月), the word for "moon" or "month." January is yi yue ("one-month"), and December is shi er yue ("twelve-month"). Once you can count to twelve, you own the entire calendar.
A few everyday time words round things out and come up constantly.
今天
jintian
Today
明天
mingtian
Tomorrow
昨天
zuotian
Yesterday
周末
zhoumo
Weekend
Put it together and you can already say something useful: xingqi liu is Saturday, part of the zhoumo, and if today is jintian, then mingtian is the day after. Real sentences, built from numbers.
In China the week starts on Monday, not Sunday — calendars, planners, and phone apps all put Monday in the first column. So when a Chinese friend says the week's "first day," they mean Monday, and zhoumo, the weekend, sits at the far end where it belongs.
Keep learning Chinese
The calendar is proof of something bigger: Chinese rewards you for learning a few core pieces well, then reuses them everywhere. Nail the numbers and the days, months, and dates come free. Keep the momentum going with our free numbers and counting lessons, then lock in the sounds with audio and spaced repetition in the Pretalk app.
