{
  "id": 12868310,
  "title": "Why the traditional Chinese practice of nominal age makes people up to 2 years older",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/08/why-the-traditional-chinese-practice-of-nominal-age-makes-people-up",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-10-08T12:08:19.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "South China Morning Post",
    "slug": "south-china-morning-post",
    "url": "https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3370216/why-traditional-chinese-practice-nominal-age-makes-people-2-years-older"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": null,
  "summary": "Age calculation in China is probably one of the most confusing aspects of Chinese culture, even for Chinese people themselves, because two systems are used. One system is the international standard: a person’s age is calculated from their date of birth. The other, the traditional nominal-age system, or xu sui, adds a year at the start of each lunisolar year. Under the xu sui system, a person’s…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}