Ancient China has a long history, culture has a long history, in the long years, the ancients used their own life experience, for the future generations of us to summarize a lot of valuable experience miscellaneous talk, in the form of colloquialisms or proverbs to express, such as "leap April, eat leaves" is one of them, then the question is, what does this sentence mean? Does it make sense?
Because there is a certain gap between the traditional Chinese chronology method and the operation law of the sun, so in order to maintain the rotation of the sun, there will be no huge difference, so every few years, there will be some special days or months, such as the leap month is so, and the year in which the month is located, it is also called "leap year".
In fact, the production of a leap month has a certain relationship with the twenty-four solar terms. Generally speaking, the twenty-four solar terms are divided into twelve seasons and twelve middle qi, and the lunar calendar will have two qi every month, which are the festival at the beginning of the month and the middle of the month after the middle of the month. At the beginning of the month, the festival is the season, that is, Li Chun, Sting, Qingming, Li Xia, Mangzhong, Xiao Xia, Li Qiu, White Dew, Cold Dew, Li Dong, Heavy Snow, and Little Cold as the season; after the middle of the month, it is called the middle qi, that is, the winter solstice, the great cold, the rain, the spring equinox, the valley rain, the small full, the summer solstice, the great summer, the summer heat, the autumn equinox, the frost fall, and the light snow as the medium.
In this process, if there is a month of "no gas", then it is a leap month, for example, this year is a leap year, because this year's April, the whole month has two seasons of lixia and small full, there is no mid-air, so April is a leap month.
Interestingly, the leap month of each cycle is in a different month, and for some specific years of leap months, people have certain special ideas, such as leap April, so there is a "leap April, eat leaves" saying.
In fact, the phrase "leap April, eat leaves" is very easy to understand, and you can see that it has a certain relationship with agricultural harvests. In fact, for us today, April is a very good season, the weather has just warmed up, but it has not reached a very hot situation, so it is a good time to go out and play. During these years, some flowers also competed to bloom, so everywhere was full of good states and pleasant feelings.
Unfortunately, it was not a good month for the ancient peasants. April is in a more awkward season, last year's grain has not eaten much, and the crops that have just been planted have not yet matured, so many people living on agriculture will have a feeling of being green and yellow.
In such a situation, they will even eat leaves to fill their hunger. It is easy to see the hardships of people's lives at that time, and it also reflects from the side what a big blow to them if it is a leap month.
It is not difficult to see that in a sense, the phrase "leap April, eat leaves" still has a certain truth, at least representing a summary of life by the ancients.
Of course, today, people's living standards have improved tremendously, and most people do not have to worry about food and clothing, so the impact of "leap April" on people is not large, but it can also be understood.
Reference: "Old Man's Words"