The twenty-four solar terms have a long history in China, as early as the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, people summed up the twenty-four solar terms according to the natural laws such as the location of the sun and the moon, the weather and the growth of animals and plants, and by the Qin and Han dynasties, they were fully established. As a traditional folk culture in China, the twenty-four solar terms have a huge impact on the agricultural civilization of Chinese.
1
Chinese time system
Everyone and the entire human society always lives in a certain time and space. Space is fixed and concrete, while time needs to be measured and identified in some way. The reference by which people measure and identify time is initially the phenological and climatic changes that they perceive and observe. When the moon is full and the moon is missing; when the days are long and the days are short; when the ice is frozen, the river is open, the wind is coming, the rain is coming; when the climate is warmer, the insects of the winter stings are awake, the earth can be cultivated, the seeds can germinate, the crops can grow; when the migratory birds fly and fly away... These climatic and phenological changes were used by our ancestors as a basis for early time measurements.
Time is an important way of existence of all matter in the world, and the concept of time is an abstract concept, which is the expression of the movement of matter, the continuity of change, and the sequentialness. Time is a parameter that humans use to describe the process of the movement of matter or the process of events. In order to more accurately measure time, calculate time, and record time, people must further choose references with universality, durability, and periodic circulation. Thus, the sun, the moon, the ripening period of grain, etc., become the preferred frame of reference. Humans have long learned to observe the sun, moon and stars to measure time. About five thousand years ago, people used the time pole to observe the shadow of the sun. In the 11th century BC, there were already records of sundials and leaky pots. The invention of clocks that record time in detail was already in the second half of the 13th century.
The system of public time within peoples or groups of nations that coordinates and regulates is the specific calendar applied by each country. The most common of the current calendars in the world are the solar calendar, or solar calendar, which uses the cycle of the earth's rotation around the sun as a reference, which is the so-called Gregorian calendar used by the mainland today. The twenty-four solar terms, which are part of our traditional time system, are also based on the cycle of the Earth's rotation around the Sun as a reference. In addition to the solar calendar, there is also the lunar calendar, or lunar calendar, which refers to the cycle of the moon's rotation around the Earth. The calendar that the mainland has been using since the Xia Dynasty and was revised by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty in the first year of the first year of the Taichu Dynasty, taking into account the solar calendar and the lunar calendar, is the luni-yang calendar, which we call the "Summer Calendar", "Lunar Calendar", or commonly known as the "Lunar Calendar" and "Old Calendar". In this way, the summer calendar we follow is actually a yin-yang calendar, a calendar that draws on both the observation of the moon and the observation of the sun.
Our traditional folk festival system, such as the Spring Festival, Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Zhongyuan Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, Chongyang Festival, as well as Qingming and Winter Solstice, are based on the yin-yang calendar that has been in use for thousands of years. This calendar still occupies an important place in our minds and in our practical activities. Just as we feel intimate and extremely praised for the glorious moon and the sun (people have characterized the moon and the sun and created a large number of myths and legends as the best illustration), we also have a deep love and attachment to the yin-yang calendar that has been used for thousands of years.
In order to accurately reflect a timing method that is extremely important for engaging in agricultural production and at the same time accurately marks the law of cold and summer exchanges, people divide the 365 days of the year into 24 equal points, and give a name respectively, such as spring, rain, sting, spring equinox, etc., so the time marking system of twenty-four solar terms is formed. The ancients have long mastered the two-point, two-to-two most important solar terms: the spring equinox, the autumn equinox (the length of day and night are equal), the summer solstice (the longest daytime), and the winter solstice (the shortest daytime). In some historical periods, the names of certain solar terms may be different from the present, but in Han Liu An's Huainan Zi (141 BC), there is a clear record of the names of the twenty-four solar terms. Each solar term (including solar terms and middle gas) has obvious "phenology" as a symbol, that is, the so-called twenty-four solar terms and seventy-two phenology (one solar term and three weathers).
Our ancient ancestors invented the solar terms, which reflected the changes in nature, the state of animals and plants, and the state and changes in the internal functions of our human body, and they were quite accurate: rain, grass and trees sprouting; frost falling, grass and trees falling yellow; standing autumn, cool breeze to and so on. These are all formed from people's delicate feelings about the natural world, reflecting the accurate cognition of objective laws, which is quite scientific.
The above is reflected in the time system used in the combined use of the lunar and solar calendars in our Chinese lives, each with its scientific basis, calculation methods and historical development process. On the surface, it seems to be unrelated and contradictory to each other, but in our lives, they are used interchangeably and complement each other, forming a coordinated and used, pluralistic and unified time calculation system. This pluralistic and unified time system is the background of our Chinese production and life rhythms and festival systems.
The traditional festival system of Chinese is very different from the traditional festivals of some other ethnic groups. If the festival system of some nationalities is formulated with the anniversary of religious figures or certain social celebrities as the core (of course, when setting up these religious festivals, sometimes we have to consider "attaching" to the national cultural traditions with a long history), the traditional festivals of our Chinese nation are mainly established with the coordination of the relationship between man and nature as the core.
For example, we Chinese have a particularly intimate emotional relationship with the moon, and some of our festivals are related to the lack of the moon from the perspective of the earth, which is rare in Western culture. Shangyuan, Mid-Autumn, Chinese New Year's Eve and even the Human Day, The Seventh of July, the Eighth of July, the Twenty-third of the Waxing Moon, we will all be connected to the state of the moon. Chinese this special affection for the moon is to see the moon as a place similar to the human world. There are majestic buildings - Guanghan Palace, where there are sacred plants——— laurel trees that cannot be cut down, where there are cute animals——— white rabbits that pound medicine, where there are Chang'e and Wu Gang, who flew from the human world to the sky and were upgraded to gods, where there is the epitome of the human world, the beautification of the human world.
For such a celestial body as the moon, we have always been in love, and the moon has become a very important object in our symbolic system. Based on this symbol, we commemorate and celebrate a series of important festivals, such as the Lantern Festival and the Mid-Autumn Festival of the Moon, the Tanabata and the Twenty-Third Day of the Moon, the Chinese New Year's Eve of the Moon And the First Day of the Chinese New Year, and so on. This festival system of ours has become part of the soul of our national culture and part of the foundation of our folk tradition. "Think of relatives every festive season", do not think of relatives, do not have relatives, do not recognize the six relatives, have no friends and no friends, do not love the community, do not love the hometown, where will the nation be? Where will the state be? Nationality is one of the essential qualities of the festival.
2
The creation of the twenty-four solar terms
Speaking of the establishment of the twenty-four solar terms system, in the Spring and Autumn Period, our ancestors used the method of measuring the shadow of the sun with earth dials to determine the four time nodes of the winter solstice, summer solstice, spring equinox and autumn equinox with the shortest, longest and equal length of the day. The Qin Dynasty also determined the four time nodes for the beginning of the four seasons: Li Chun, Li Xia, Li Qiu, and Li Dong. In the Han Dynasty, the complete system of twenty-four solar terms was completely established. Observing the sun from the perspective of the earth, the sun is divided into 360 degrees according to the trajectory of the ecliptic longitude, and the time spent every 15 degrees of operation is a "solar term". Runs 360 degrees and has a total of twenty-four solar terms, i.e. two solar terms per month. Under each solar term, it is subdivided into three weathers: the first weather, the second weather, and the third wait, one wait every five days. For example, the characterization of the three seasons of Lichun is: "The first weather for the east wind is solved, the second weather for the stinging insects to vibrate, and the third weather for the fish to be negative ice". The twenty-four solar terms and the seventy-two weather are both markers of a period of climate change, and their start date and hour are also precise time nodes for climate phenological changes.
The birthplace of the twenty-four solar terms is the vast area in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin. Due to the vastness of China's territory, there are significant differences in climatic phenology between the north and the south and the east and the west, and the time of the twenty-four solar terms is not consistent. Therefore, the agricultural proverbs involving the twenty-four solar terms have a distinct regional nature, and people will summarize the cognition of natural changes and specifically plan the process of labor according to the characteristics of the location. For example, the northeast proverb says "Qingming moth valley rain silkworm" or "summer moth liqiu silkworm", while in Zhejiang it says "Qingming hatching moth, Lixia sees new silk"; in Zhangye, Gansu Province, where datian is planted, it is said that "Peng zu lived for eight hundred years, and the field should be planted before the spring equinox"; and in the Yangtze River basin where the paddy fields are planted, it is said that "people who are not busy until the Qingming Dynasty are not busy, and they set fires in summer to plant seedlings at night". We see that in proverbs, the vast number of peasants have a specific and precise grasp of seasons and regions, and do not regard the experience of one region as an immutable and rigid dogma applied to another region, but summarize their own proverbs that are suitable for local characteristics according to local conditions.
As a unique time system of Chinese, the twenty-four solar terms profoundly affect people's way of thinking and code of conduct. Agricultural communities arrange agricultural labor according to the solar terms, carry out seasonal ceremonies and folklore activities, and arrange various activities such as food, clothing, shelter and transportation for families and individuals. Around each of the twenty-four solar terms, people organize production and life activities, but also enable traditional knowledge in various fields of production and life to be preserved, protected and passed on in colorful folk activities and related rituals.
As a time system invented by Chinese ancestors, the "Twenty-Four Solar Terms" is the wisdom crystallization of China's agricultural civilization, which has always guided the agricultural activities of spring ploughing, summer harvest, autumn harvest and winter Tibet, and is also an effective means of being kind to nature and moral cultivation, enhancing identity, and building harmony.
In spring, many places have ceremonial activities such as welcoming spring, whipping spring, singing spring, and worshiping spring, worshipping the spring gods and starting farming. Lixia, in the Hangzhou area, there are traditional activities of eating black rice and ascending to a high level, aiming to strengthen the body. In the autumn of Liqiu, Xiangxi Huayuan Miao Township celebrated the "Autumn Festival", people held ceremonies, sang Miao songs, played Miao drums, and praised the wind and rain, grain and abundance. In some places in Guangxi, there is the "Zhuang Frost Festival", where ceremonies are held to celebrate the harvest and thank the natural gifts of heaven and earth.
As the saying goes, "the winter solstice is greater than the year". During the winter solstice, Sanmen, Zhejiang and other places have the custom of offering winter sacrifices. The people of the community held a ceremony to worship the ancestors, solemn and solemn. Grateful to the society, Dunmu clan pro. The custom of the three-door festival winter festival has continued for thousands of years and continues to this day.
It follows the times and moves with the times, and integrates the national spirit of Chinese Taoist nature, advocating harmony and cherishing life. In order to facilitate memory, people also compiled twenty-four solar terms of song: spring rain shocks the spring valley day, summer is full of summer and summer are connected, autumn dew and autumn frost falls, winter snow and snow are small and cold in winter.
China has submitted to UNESCO the 24 solar terms as candidates for the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and the units that submitted the application to UNESCO are the China Agricultural Museum, the Chinese Folklore Society and a number of local communities. The brief description of the twenty-four solar terms given in the declaration submitted by China is: "The ancient Chinese divided the annual trajectory of the sun into twenty-four equal parts, each of which was a 'solar term', collectively referred to as 'twenty-four solar terms'. The 24 solar terms are a knowledge system and social practice formed by recognizing the laws of change in the seasons, climate, phenology and other aspects of the year, guiding traditional agricultural production and daily life, and an important part of the traditional Chinese calendar system and its related practical activities. In the international meteorological community, this time cognition system is hailed as 'China's fifth major invention'. ”
The 2020 application has been approved for publication. This is a resounding hymn to the twenty-four solar terms we Chinese in the new era. Chinese this invention of the system of time has become a precious heritage that has received universal attention in the entire treasure house of human knowledge. As a historical height for human beings to recognize nature, conform to nature and use nature, it will be respected, cared for and protected by the people of all countries in the world.
3
The cultural significance of the twenty-four solar terms
Twenty-four solar terms are part of Chinese time frame. Although foreign countries also have their own naming of the spring equinox, autumn equinox, winter solstice, summer solstice and other time nodes of cognition, but can be subdivided into twenty-four solar terms, seventy-two phenology, so that production and life and nature so closely combined, is our Chinese, and the establishment of this time system for our cultural identity and the cohesion of the Chinese nation, is of great significance.
First of all, the twenty-four solar terms are an invention for us to observe natural changes and record the temporal process of our own lives, and it is an important part of the system of time that constitutes Chinese. At first, we did not have a more accurate measure to record the time nodes of our lives and the process of events we experienced, but later we had methods such as twenty-four solar terms and seventy-two phenology to explain the time nodes of events and calculate the social processes of people and the life processes of each of us as an individual, as a time system, to measure and record the nodes of change of all things and even the entire process of human social development.
Secondly, for our Chinese, it is a very delicate and scientific method of cognition that we use in the process of facing nature, conforming to nature, using nature and dialogue with nature, and it is a means of recording our knowledge and practice of nature.
Third, because of the time calculation method of solar terms, it has entered the system of traditional Chinese festivals as a time system. For example, the Qingming Festival is still one of the most important festivals in our national traditional festivals. The connotation of Qingming is also a variety of, from the perspective of stepping on the green and outinging, Qingming is a festival that allows people to go to nature, get close to nature, and coexist in harmony with nature; in another sense, it is to link reality and history, and to connect ourselves with our ancestors, which constructs a relationship of historical inheritance.
For the entire human society, the twenty-four solar terms are obviously a creation with specific scientific connotations and great reference significance, which is a good typical example of the intangible cultural heritage that human beings can share in the context of the development of cultural diversity.
Finally, when the twenty-four solar terms are officially inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, they invisibly elevate its status in our minds, enhance our national pride, and through many such examples, it will inevitably enhance our national identity. National traditional festivals are themselves an important factor in national identity. Just like every New Year's Day, we will invariably go home for the New Year, to return to our hometown and reunite with our relatives, so the national traditional festival system is a very important symbol of national identity. The twenty-four solar terms, as a time system invented by the ancestors of the Chinese nation, as a representative work of the intangible cultural heritage of mankind, are placed in a clear position today, especially highlighted, so that the entire human society can pay attention to, share and protect, which not only enhances our national pride and enhances our national identity; at the same time, it is also a symbol of the world's understanding of China.
Some people may have such a question: the people in the city are far away from agricultural production activities, so do we still need twenty-four solar terms? What kind of life, will follow what kind of time frame, we now arrange work and life on a weekly basis, in fact, this is the product of industrialized society, is a kind of artificial arrangement of mechanical rhythm of life. The twenty-four solar terms are the time frame for understanding the changes in nature, adapting to the changes in nature, and using the changes in nature, and its scientific value and rich connotations are colorful, reminding people to return to nature and live in harmony with nature, which is why we need to add a time frame like the twenty-four solar terms to our lives. Modern people live in the forest of reinforced concrete, ignoring nature for too long, and to understand nature, twenty-four solar terms as a time scale is indispensable.
The deep meaning and function of the twenty-four solar terms is to adjust the relationship between our human group and nature, take the Qingming Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival: among the twenty-four solar terms, the Qingming Festival has become a national traditional festival widely carried out by people. Qingming, on the fifteenth day after the spring equinox, is the first solar term after that. In March, everything sprouts, the weather is quiet and clear, and all living things (plants, animals and people) germinate a strong and exuberant vitality, so there are "girls traveling to spring" and so on. Walking in the green, spring travel, and at the same time offering sweeps, are quite common festivals. To this day, many ethnic groups in the country still have activities such as the March Three Songs Market and the socializing of men and women. It is precisely because of the summer calendar that it has a affinity and correspondence between the Qingming festival and nature.
Let's talk about the Dragon Boat Festival. Four, five and six months are summer, and May is the midsummer month. The month of Yin is the first month of the year (the first month), the month of February, the month of March, the month of April, and the month of May. Noon moon noon day, so it is called "heavy noon" and "heavy five". At noon (12 o'clock), the day is in the middle of the day, so the Dragon Boat Festival is also known as the "Middle Heaven Festival". It is when the yang qi is in full swing and the yin qi is born, so it is also called "evil moon". In this important joint lurking in this crisis, of course, we must be careful with the transition and smooth transition. Evil qi sprouts, and it must be avoided. Through various means, such as bathing orchid soup, ascending, collecting medicine, wearing incense bags, tying colorful threads, dragon boat racing, etc., people use Ai, calamus, Ai ren, Ai Hu, Ai Qi, Pu Jian, Xiong Huang wine, cinnabar, etc., to prevent the five poisons and send the plague god. Similarly, there is also the summer calendar, and the Dragon Boat Festival also tells us to maintain close contact with nature.
The twenty-four solar terms have also stimulated people's aesthetic tastes, and successive generations of poets have created countless well-known and popular masterpieces around the twenty-four solar terms. The general public has also created countless folk proverbs with rich connotations of the twenty-four solar terms.
The hunan farmer proverb says, "The festival is divided into twenty-four, and there are seventy-two." "As a short and precise form of language that is highly summarized by human wisdom and widely circulated in oral form, although all the peoples of the world have rich creation and accumulation, Chinese who live in a vast area, have a long history and profound cultural accumulation have created an extremely rich variety of proverbs. There are proverbs about the knowledge of life, there are proverbs that emphasize ethics and morality, there are proverbs that are edutainment... There are a lot of things, and they reflect all aspects of Chinese life. Among them, especially the agricultural proverbs that reflect the agricultural production activities of the Chinese ancestors are the most precious. The agricultural proverb clearly embodies the intimate relationship between man and nature, man's respect and use of natural laws, and the harmonious coexistence of man and nature, while at the same time, he arranges his labor and life in an orderly manner in the process of time. This is a precious oral tradition created and passed down from generation to generation Chinese, and this experience of agricultural life sublimated into precise phrases is a summary of the law and a guide to the life of labor, and the most vivid and perceptible portrayal of the industriousness and wisdom of the Chinese.
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