What is Bazi?
Bazi (八字, bā zì, “eight characters”) is a traditional Chinese way of describing a person using the year, month, day, and hour they were born. Each moment is recorded as a pair of characters, so four moments become eight characters — that is where the name comes from.
What a Bazi chart captures
A Bazi chart is a snapshot of four moments in time, expressed as eight Chinese characters. The four moments are the year, month, day, and hour of birth. The eight characters come from pairing each moment with a heavenly stem (天干) and an earthly branch (地支).
- Four pillars, two characters each. Year, month, day, and (if the time is known) hour. Together they describe a moment, not a person.
- The day master. The stem on the day pillar is called the day master (日主). It is the most common starting point in English-language Bazi reading.
- Five elements (五行). Each of the eight characters belongs to one of the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, water. A Bazi chart counts how often each element appears.
What Bazi is not
- Not a personality verdict. A chart is a starting observation, not a definition.
- Not a prediction. It does not forecast events.
- Not medical, legal, or financial advice. Even an experienced reader is one of many lenses, not a clinical or financial tool.
- Not a remedy prescription. BaziTrace does not tell you which food, color, or career to “balance” an element. That framing is not in the engine output.
What BaziTrace shows on a chart
A BaziTrace chart is a plain report of the structural pieces that come straight out of the calculation. There are five layers, and nothing else is added on top.
- Four visible pillars. Each pillar is one heavenly stem (天干) paired with one earthly branch (地支) — two characters per pillar, eight characters total.
- Day master (日主). The stem on the day pillar, with its element and yin/yang polarity. See the day master page.
- Five-element tally (五行). A count of how many of each element — wood, fire, earth, metal, water — appear across the four pillars. See the five elements page.
- Ten Gods (十神). For every visible stem, a fixed label that names how that stem relates to the day master via the five-element cycle and yin/yang polarity. The ten labels never change. See the ten gods page.
- Fixed hidden-stem map (藏干). For every branch, the small set of stems stored inside it, taken from the traditional branch-to-stem table. The map is fixed; it does not change with the day or the chart. See the hidden stems page.
What BaziTrace does
BaziTrace calculates the four pillars and the five-element tally using the reference library lunar-typescript 1.8.6 (MIT), which handles the solar-term ephemeris and the day-boundary convention internally. The calculation runs in your browser; your birth data never leaves the device. The full method and known boundaries are on the methodology page.
What BaziTrace does not do
- No true solar time. Birth city is collected for clarity but is not used in the calculation. Civil time only.
- No time zone or historical DST resolution. The entered time is used as the local civil time.
- No useful-god or favorable-element judgment.The engine reports Ten Gods labels and a fixed hidden-stem map, but does not pick a useful god, rank strengths, or score which element is “best” for you.
- No personalisation beyond your input. The optional AI explanation (click-triggered) only reflects the engine output. It does not read or recall any other chart.
Frequently asked questions
Is Bazi the same as Chinese astrology?
Bazi overlaps with traditional Chinese astrology but is its own system. Where horoscopes work with twelve signs and a year, Bazi uses four pillars and a continuous 60-cycle day count. The frameworks share cultural roots but use different rules.
Do I need to know my birth time?
No. With an unknown time you get a three-pillar chart. The day master, year, and month pillars are still accurate, and the five-element tally is reported with a total of 6 instead of 8. See Bazi without a birth time for the full discussion.
How do I read my chart after I generate it?
Start with the day master, then read the five-element tally, the Ten Gods labels on every visible stem, and the fixed hidden-stem map inside each branch. The how-to-read guide walks through all five layers in plain English.