Question Xianxia/Wuxia Time Conversion

So I've been wondering, can someone convert this to actual seconds and minutes?

Eg: 10 breaths of time, blah blah to brew a cup of tea etc..

If i miss some "ancient" time measurement mentioned on the novels kindly answer it as well thanks! (シ_ _)シ

 

a breath probably a second
an incense [can be 10~15 minute]

 

I mean take ten deep breaths and see how much time it took then there

 

There's honestly too much to keep track of it, me, i just think vaguely about it, a breath is very quick, a cup of tea is a short amount of time (from like 30 seconds to 2 minutes)

 

Deathblade once made a post about how long it took for an incense stick to run out. I'm too lazy to find it thought.

 

An incense stick of time typically means ~15 - 20 minutes, a breath is like 2 - 3 seconds, a cup of tea is a few minutes.
Also worth noting that many such stories use Chinese hours (shichen), which are twice as long as western hours. Sometimes translators alter the number to fit western hours, sometimes they don't. If it feels like there's too much time happening in an hour, it's probably a shi and thus two hours.

 

To brew a cup of tea takes 3-5 minutes. It depends on how strong you like your hot leaf juice. Some people use a lot of tea leaves and brew for 1 or 2 minutes. But I think the modern authors probably mean around 5 minutes.

 

breath = holding my breath for about a minute.

simple mathz

 

A breath is roughly two seconds. And 'the time to finish a cup of tea' is about 10 to 15 minutes or so. Remember, this is Asian culture. Slamming down a cup of joe in a couple of minutes is BAD manners. Heh.

 

Thanks!

 

in martial world.
4 incense time is 1 hour

 

Somewehere here
https://immortalmountain.wordpress.com/glossary/wuxia-xianxia-xuanhuan-terms/#misc

There is incense there, search around the website it is a good website to learn xianxia/xuanhuan terms

Edit: or go here

https://www.reddit.com/r/noveltranslations/comments/4az3tg/ancient_chinese_measurements_of_time/

 

1 cup of tea 10 mins
1 short moment has 10 breaths
1 breath is 1 second
Ancient times incense usually takes 15 mins to burn

 

Being a d&d player, I always equated one breath to one combat round, so they're about 6 seconds in my mind.

 

Nah, all Xianxia/Wuxia using something like PlotSpeed(tm) meaning everything is moving according to the speed of plot. PlotSpeed(tm) is decelerated proportinate to the amount of action per second.

 

Yep, one of the issues with the term is that ancient Chinese time keepers would mark timekeeping incense sticks to denote burn time for public sale. While there were usually Imperial standards for such things, the standards changed depending on the era and many standards weren't that closely adhered to anyway.

Furthermore it's often unclear whether the author means one of these marked lengths of time or an entire stick, and of course even entire sticks could have different burn times.

Usually the author means around 15~20 minutes, but sometimes they don't.

 

Lol that's exactly what I was thinking. or brew yourself some tea and time it

 

From http://www.wuxiaworld.com/chinese-idiom-glossary/:
The time it takes an Incense Stick to burn (一炷香 yī zhù xiāng) (一柱香的时间 yī zhù xiāng de shíjiān)

• Meaning: a poetic way of referring to a short time span… depending on the author, generally either 5 minutes or 30 minutes
• More information on ancient Chinese time measurements here.

The time it takes to drink a Cup of Tea (一盏茶的时间 yī zhǎn chá de shíjiān)

• Meaning: a poetic way of referring to a time span of about 10-15 minutes

The time it takes to eat a Meal (一顿饭的时间 yī dùn fàn de shíjiān)

• Meaning: a poetic way of referring to a time span of about 30-45 minutes

A Breath of time (一个呼吸的时间 yī gè hūxī de shíjiān)

• Meaning: a poetic way of referring to a very short time span (how long it takes a person to inhale and exhale once)… usually about 1-3 seconds

edit: More on time measurement