Professor Ethan Richard Harkness’s current research project is a study and translation of the astronomical and calendrical texts among the Tsinghua manuscripts, a large cache of Warring States era (ca. 300 BCE) bamboo manuscripts in the collection of Tsinghua University, Beijing. These texts include previously unseen astro-calendrical systems with many alternative names for the visible asterisms in the night sky and some knotty paleographic problems related to the use of the Chu script in which they have been recorded. Apart from astronomical references to the time of year, the texts also contain an abundance of meteorological and phenological information intended to confirm the progress of the seasons, and Professor Harkness’s previous work on these layers of the texts has pointed toward source materials of varying antiquity - some probably not much older than the manuscripts themselves and others many centuries older. Apart from the inherent interest of these texts for the history of science, there are also a number of surprising connections to transmitted Chinese texts of diverse contents. For example, particular points of comparison have the potential to provide new perspectives, and ultimately new readings, for well-known early Chinese texts such as Mozi, Shanhaijing, Chuci, and even the Shangshu. They also provide important historical context for the early development of Chinese hemerology, the art of distinguishing different qualities of time to determine good and bad days for all manner of activities in daily life. In partial contrast to the prevailing narrative about the hemerology that became widespread in the Qin and Western Han eras, i.e. that it was a kind of phenomenon of popular culture featuring local networks of literate individuals with common interests who shared texts and learned from each other, the Tsinghua manuscripts suggest that certain elements of the common hemerology had elite origins among the scholars who enjoyed patronage in the courts of the late Warring States kingdoms.