At the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games, the countdown to the traditional Chinese twenty-four solar terms was strung together, and the spiritual animation of the four seasons, the beautiful verses of classical romance and the healthy posture of modern athletes were intertwined, Chinese showed the Chinese culture and international Olympic spirit to the world in a unique way.
Twenty-four solar terms is China's unique method of calculating agricultural time, is the wisdom of ancient agricultural civilization crystallization, the literati of the past generations also wrote a lot of poems related to the twenty-four solar terms, the opening ceremony countdown is to use the solar terms and poetry matching way, giving the twenty-four solar terms poetic meaning:
This popular verse is from Du Fu's "Happy Rain on Spring Nights":
Good rain knows the season, when spring is happening.
Dive into the night with the wind, and the moisturizer is silent.
The wild trails are dark and the river boats are alone.
Xiao looked at the red wet place, and the flowers were heavy in the official city.
The poem was written in the spring of the second year of Emperor Suzong of Tang (761), when Du Fu was living in Caotang, Chengdu, Sichuan, which was a relatively stable life compared to the previous upheavals and displacements. He works hard here and has a deep affection for all things in nature. On the night of the spring rain, Du Fu wrote this poem, praising with great joy the spring rain that came in time and moisturized all things.
Ancient poems that describe spring rain and are suitable for reading during rainy seasons include Han Yu's "Early Spring Presents the Eighteen Members of the Water Department":
The rain on the sky street is as moist as crisp,
The grass color is close but not there.
The most is the benefit of spring of the year,
The imperial capital is full of smoke and willows.
Zhang Eighteen is a close friend of the poet, ranked eighteenth among his brothers, and was once a member of the Water Department. The poem depicts a wet, hazy, fresh and lovely picture of early spring: the light rain is moist and smooth, the grass seems to be nothing, and the greenery of the first spring fills with the infinite vitality of the early spring.
"Spring thunder, all things long" is a proverb. With the sound of spring thunder, everything began to grow vigorously, peach red willow green, bees flying butterflies, a vibrant scene. Hibernating animals also awoke and began to come out to move, and as for the reason for their awakening, the ancients believed that the thunder of spring woke them up. In fact, the animals wake up mainly because the temperature has risen.
The Tang Dynasty poet Wei Yingwu has a poem "GuanTianJia" that describes the stinging festival:
The light rain is new, and a thunder sting begins.
The Tian family was idle for a few days, and farming began from then on.
Ding Zhuangju was in the wilderness, and the field garden was also taken care of.
Returning to Jing Changyan, drinking the water of the west stream.
Hunger is not self-suffering, anointing and joyful.
There is no storage for the warehouse, and the servitude is still not over.
Fang Kuo does not cultivate, and Lu eats out of Luli.
"The light rain is new, and a thunder sting begins." The Tian family is idle for a few days, and the cultivation begins from here", the sting is in full swing, the spring rain is pouring, the grass and trees are new, and the peasants' one-year labor also begins at this time. The whole poem describes the busyness of spring ploughing, the hardships of farmers, and also expresses the condemnation and self-reflection of those who do not earn for nothing.
This poem is from Yuan Ming's Spring Wind of the Qing Dynasty:
The spring breeze is like a distinguished guest, and it will be prosperous as soon as it arrives.
Come sweep away the snow of a thousand mountains and return to the flowers of all nations.
The spring breeze is like a distinguished guest, everywhere you go, everything grows, prosperous, and full of vitality. When the spring wind came, it melted the snow on the mountain; the spring wind returned, leaving a full bloom of flowers. Through the description of spring wind and spring flowers, the poem shows a picture of a spring scene with blooming flowers and vitality. There are many ancient poems describing scenes in the same season, such as Du Fu's "Absolute Sentence" and Su Shi's "Begonia":
Absolutely
[Tang] Du Fu
The late sun is beautiful, and the spring breeze is fragrant with flowers and herbs.
The mud melts the swallows, and the sand warms the sleeping mandarin ducks.
Begonias
[Song] Su Shi
East Wind Pan Sogo,
Fragrant mist sky moon corridor.
Only afraid of going to sleep in the middle of the night,
Therefore, burn high candles to illuminate red makeup.
In almost every of the twenty-four solar terms, literati wrote poems for it:
The above ancient poems that match the solar terms come from the book "Twenty-four Solar Terms Are So Interesting", some of which are the verses selected for the countdown to the opening ceremony, such as "The rain is pouring during the Qingming Season, and the pedestrians on the road want to break their souls" (Qingming), "The night of the heavenly steps is as cool as water, lying down to see the morning glory Weaver Star" (Li Qiu), "Spring plants a grain of millet, autumn harvest ten thousand seeds" (summer).
"Twenty-four solar terms is so interesting" is a special book about the knowledge of twenty-four solar terms, not only about the animal and plant natural knowledge related to the solar terms, but also pay attention to traditional culture, with "twenty-four solar terms in Chinese characters" and "twenty-four solar terms in ancient poetry" and other small sections, explaining the Chinese character culture and classic ancient poems related to solar terms. The last 10 seconds of the countdown to the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games without poems can be found in this book to match the ancient poems, such as: