The decision to write an article on the twenty-four solar terms is actually because of the new crown pneumonia epidemic.
The pandemic has disrupted many travel plans. Taking the opportunity to re-read many poems, I found the magic of the four seasons in which they flickered. "If you want to ask the flowers and branches and a cup of wine, why should people be different" - if you leave the mountains and rivers and the wind and moon, without the spring wind, summer, lotus, autumn water, winter and snow dyeing, only then will the feelings of the ancients be as deep as the ancients are afraid that they will also have a lot less deep and deep thoughts.
He also remembered that the cities he had lived in over the years, whether ancient or new, had good intentions everywhere. Once you can't go to the most suitable city in the most beautiful season and eat seasonal food, you will have the regret of losing cardamom. When you can walk around freely, you don't feel it, and when you live, you realize that each festival on the calendar is called beautiful.
An Yiru and her new book "Twenty-Four Days"
Plum blossoms in Jiangnan, peach blossoms in Lingnan, apricot blossoms in Xinjiang, pear blossoms in Sichuan, maple leaves in Qixia, ginkgo biloba in Tengchong, mistsong in the northeast, ice in the Yellow River, and daylight in Lhasa, they are all beckoning to me! Ask me, why haven't you come yet?
Everything sometimes, thinking about beautiful food and drink, decided to write these articles, only as a trip, and then thought of corresponding the twenty-four solar terms to twenty-four cities, the solar terms are the longitude and latitude of time, the interlude of life, only integrated into the daily life, can be transformed into a sentient movement. Otherwise, it is just a stereotyped date on the calendar, and when asked by the children around me, they don't know where to explain.
Influenced by my grandfather, I am deeply attached to the old things in my heart, willing to be a conservative person, follow the festival, feel the rotation of the seasons, and depict the fireworks in the world and the loose customs of home in the world. If the solar terms are nothing, then the four seasons are also nothing, time will become nothing, and all kinds of things in the world will be nothing to rely on.
It is not difficult to write about the city, it is not difficult to write about travel, only it is difficult to write about the solar terms and phenology, it is difficult for me to be diligent, the grain is not divided, there is no grain, there is a serious lack of corresponding experience, every time I write about the phenology of agricultural proverbs, I scratch my head and my feet, I am ashamed that I can only follow the script, I cannot write the exquisite changes in the growth of all things on the earth, and I cannot express the link induction between people and nature in labor.
So I thought about it, and Whether to write about the festival or start with the familiar eating festival, as for phenology, it is just an excerpt, according to what I know with a slight explanation. If this piece is completely absent, it will probably become a book for food travel.
I have always believed that words should be as natural as they grow out of the body, and that once the rhetoric is too flowery, it falls behind. It looks like a cloud of smoke is full of paper, but it is actually empty.
Solar terms are not a tool to show off rhetoric and knowledge. It can be the cause and bridge for us to examine ourselves and all things.
To grasp this cause and effect and walk through this bridge, the first thing to understand is that the twenty-four solar terms phenology are the life experiences summarized by the ancestors of the Yellow River Basin in the Central Plains by observing the heavens and the earth, and using them to stipulate the chronological order, establish etiquette, and guide Nongsang. It may have mistakes and omissions, but it does not represent superstition, and respecting it does not mean ignorance.
The ancients called the solar terms "qi", which has six qi in one season and two qis per month: the former is "solar terms" and the latter is "middle qi". Taking the spring festival as an example, the spring is the solar terms, the rain is the middle qi, the sting is the solar terms, and the spring is divided into the middle qi, alternating, each with three weathers, a total of fifteen days, and later the "solar terms" and "middle qi" are collectively referred to as "solar terms".
The significance of solar terms to the ancestors is no less than the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics, and no less than the reopening of the world after an epiphany. Adhering to the original reverence for nature, people explore the rhythm of heaven and earth in innocence and ignorance, reverently distinguishing between yin and yang and the four seasons, and walking carefully and happily in them.
Secondly, the ancient concept of territory has long been very different from the cognition of today's people, and the climate has also changed. For example, the land of Guanlong was lush with grass and trees in ancient times, and now it is not enough. It is true that solar terms are ancient wisdom, but they also inevitably have limitations and cognitive errors, and they do not need to be generalized, let alone deliberately beautified.
Ancient theories are difficult to use in its entirety, and even the ancients are constantly revising their own cognition. From the fragments of "Li Ji • Moon Order", "Lü Shi Chunqiu", "Xia Xiaozheng", "Yi Zhou Shu • Shi Xun Xie", to "Huainan Zi • Astronomical Training • Twenty-four Solar Terms", "Four People's Moon Order", to Wu Cheng's "Seventy-two Waiting Interpretations of the Moon Order" in the Yuan Dynasty, people synthesize various knowledge such as phenology, celestial phenomena, and rizhao, and the interpretation of the solar terms is more and more perfect and meticulous, and more and more understanding of local conditions will there be local customs and records such as "Customs and Soil History", "JingChu Chronicle", "Tokyo Dream Hualu", "Dream Liang Record", "Qing Jia Lu", "Yanjing Shi Ji Ji", etc. There are also many literary notes, which will not be listed in detail.
The one that impressed me the most in these books was Zhang Dai's "Night Sailing Ship". Zhang Dai's "otter sacrifices" on astronomical astrology and solar terms and phenology are listed quite well, and there are many allusions that are very cute, feeling like an ancient encyclopedia.
Since the ancestors set up sundials to observe the heavens, the first pair of observed solar terms are the winter solstice and summer solstice, as the shortest and longest day of the year, its change law is the most easily noticed. This is followed by the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, two days and nights of equal length. In the late Warring States period, the ancients further divided the year into eight equal parts, so that there were eight solar terms of Lichun, Spring Equinox, Lixia, Summer Solstice, Liqiu, Autumn Equinox, Lidong, and Winter Solstice, which were cherished and cherished in the December period of Lü's Spring and Autumn.
At that time, the mountains and fields were clear, and there was a breeze. Lighting the candle flame, sitting upright, and using a carving knife to gently carve the lines of characters on the bamboo strip with a godly heart, has become a daily routine that has a long history in the future.
Reading seasonal classics is like reading children's calligraphy and paintings, and you will be moved. Among them, there is the true meaning of fist and fist, which comes from the sincerity to heaven and earth, the goodness of all things, and the innocent answer sheet handed over by the young child in the face of the test. Although those rituals are tedious and rigid, they do not lack the imagination of the clever and majestic, crossing the boundaries of reality and pointing directly to the sky.
It was Liu An, the king of Huainan in the Western Han Dynasty who loved Taoism and invented tofu, who led his disciples to compile the Huainan Zi, which for the first time systematically expounded the division and naming of the twenty-four solar terms. Take "fifteen days as a festival, to give birth to the change of twenty-four hours." More than thirty years later, the Taichu Calendar, which was born in 104 BC, began with the first lunar month, officially incorporated the twenty-four solar terms into the calendar, became part of the luni-solar calendar, and added a leap month system. At this point, the ancient Chinese calendar was formed, and it ran for thousands of years without error.
The view of weather is an important part of the worldview of the ancients. Improving cognition little by little, like lighting up the galaxy and painting a magnificent universe, is just imagination, but also a very romantic thing. I think of the people who originally named the festival, how happy and how cautious they were, and how carefully they deliberated on the words so that future generations can still feel the solemnity when they read these names.
For today's people, the calendar is the old yellow calendar and the guide to health, but to the ancients, it is the law, belief, and rules, and it is the destiny of heaven and earth, the four-hour era, and the basis of survival. "The king can rule the country, and the people can cultivate themselves." The Dharma contained in the flow of the solar terms is followed from the Son of Heaven down to the common people. In ancient times, the four words "Fengtian Carrier" on the emperor's holy will are clear evidence.
As an example for all nations, the Son of Heaven should lead by example, fasting in advance and greeting him on time. After returning to the dynasty, officials were rewarded in order to raise grace in accordance with heaven and earth.
Among the twenty-four solar terms, there are eight people who can enjoy the treatment of the Son of Heaven's greeting and sacrifice, namely: Spring, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Autumn, Autumn Equinox, Winter, and Winter Solstice. In the "Left Transmission", the four stands, two points, two to, and then divided into points, solstices, openings, and closings.
"Whoever divides (spring equinox, autumn equinox), solstice (summer solstice, winter solstice), kai (li chun, li xia), closed (li qiu, li dong), must write clouds, for the sake of preparation." The ancients attached more importance to defining seasonal changes and meteorological extreme solar terms than ordinary solar terms. All the festivals that characterize the seasons should be carefully recorded by historians and grand sinons, characterized by weather and celestial phenomena, deduced phenological disasters, and sought good fortune and avoided evil, as the basis for formulating almanacs and guiding agricultural affairs.
Praying for the festival and the weather has nothing to do with superstition, almost every nation and country has a custom, whether it is nine days to collect the moon or to go down to the sea cable, whether it is nomadic or farming, people can never completely get rid of the control of the climate of heaven and earth. Some countries respect the solar terms more than we do.
For today's people, the solar terms may no longer be the Dhamma, but they are still wisdom. If you have enough skills, you can use the old bottle of time, fill the new wine of the years, and get drunk and laugh three thousand times. The value and significance of the festival inheritance is not that it is ancient, but that it has long been a part of life, people who love scenery can trace the traces of wind, flowers and snow, people who love food can treasure the four-hour wind, and people who love festivals and customs can find lively joy in the festival.
"Then it is like a flower, like a year of water." From the level of worldly pleasures alone, there is no reason for us to know nothing about solar terms if we want to have pleasure in time.
I think that what modern people need is not to abandon reason, deviate from common sense, and propagate some obviously old and absurd concepts, not to sensationalize the public, to blindly advocate ancient rituals and ceremonies, to flaunt elegance, and not to follow the discipline of health, but to find the true beauty and respect of life through ancient customs, to reflect on the lack of sensitivity and reverence in the heart.
Modern people sometimes live too naturally and obliviously, forgetting that time is like electricity, that the human body is perishable, that all that man uses, in addition to his own efforts to obtain, also depends on the fulfillment of the generous gifts of heaven and earth.
The human body is rare, and self-cultivation is of course the point of mentioning the temperament to the body and mind. However, just as Zhuangzi realized, man is also an ephemeral-like being in time, and the tests and nourishment he receives are essentially no different from flowers, birds, fish, insects and beasts.
All are ganga sand numbers, the existence of the finger in an instant.
Life is practice, gaze at the rhyme of the flow of time, comprehend the mysteries of death and life, and generate a peaceful and eternal compassion, no self, no one, no sentient beings, no life, can help us live more open-mindedly.
We must take good care of sentient beings and ourselves, and love this mountain and river and the earth, so that we can send out our hearts that those who have missed and ignored the beauty, those who have left for some reason, will come back with their wishes and meet us gladly. (This article is the author's preface to the new book "Twenty-Four Days" published by Zhonghua Book Company)