Chinese culture is broad and profound, with a long history and a thousand all-encompassing, one of the branches is the "twenty-four solar terms", as we all know, the ancient mainland was an agricultural civilization, people worked at sunrise and rested at sunset. Cultivating crops, attaching great importance to climate changes, in order to conform to the agricultural time, the ancestors of the ancient period, through meticulous observation, summed up the twenty-four solar terms, twenty-four solar terms have a long history, has a very rich historical accumulation, even today, for people's daily production and life, still play a great guiding significance.
This year is about to usher in the fourth of the twenty-four solar terms, that is, the spring equinox, which is the eighteenth of February in the lunar calendar and the 30th of March in the Gregorian calendar, and the specific time is 23:33:15 on the same day. So, how much do you know about this ancient solar term? What are the elegances and customs of the spring equinox?
The name "vernal equinox" is very easy to understand, "spring" is spring, and "points" even if it is divided equally, then, what is the equal division? - There are four types of "equal division".
First, the spring equinox is equal, the spring equinox is in the "mid-spring month", which happens to be at the midpoint of the whole spring, simply and clearly reminding people that by the spring equinox, the whole spring has passed halfway. Second, the Yellow Longitude is divided equally, when it comes to the twenty-four solar terms in ancient times, it is necessary to quote an ancient astronomical concept and term - "zodiac plane", the movement is relative, the earth revolves around the sun, for the earth, the sun also "revolves" around the earth, the ancients will "revolve" the sun around the earth to form a circular plane, called the ecliptic plane, the ecliptic plane twenty-four equal parts, every 15 degrees rotation is a solar term, this angle is also called the solar ecliptic longitude, and during the spring equinox, the sun ecliptic longitude happens to be 0 degrees (360 degrees) , also happens to be at the midpoint.
Third, the equinox of day and night, the vernal equinox is also known as the "day and night equinox", this point of the sun directly hit the earth's equator, for us in the southern sphere, the time of day and night happen to be 12 hours each, day and night are equally divided. Fourth, the cold and summer are equally divided, and on the day of the spring equinox, the cold and heat of the weather are uniform, the climate is mild and pleasant, and the yang and yin in the eyes of the ancients have also reached a balance.
The climate corresponds to the phenology, and the most significant phenology of the spring equinox is "Genbird Solstice", what does it mean? - During the spring equinox, the swallows return.
Xuan Bird was originally a sacred beast recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, its shape is similar to a swallow, Xuan means "black", and it just so happens that the swallow is all black, and the famous eastern Han Dynasty literary scholar Wang Yi commented on Qu Yuan's Chu Ci. When leaving the riot, the bird is directly interpreted as a swallow, that is, "the bird, the swallow also", so later generations also call the swallow the bird.
For ancient agricultural production, the spring equinox is the key season for spring wheat production, the spring equinox period, most of which is the season of abundant rain, and the wheat is also in the need of a lot of water and fertilizer at this time, as the saying goes - "the spring equinox wheat rises, the fertilizer water should follow"
Of course, in the spring equinox, there are also some very interesting customs, the most typical is the "egg" game, "spring equinox, eggs are pretty", this game is very popular in ancient times, and now it is also popular around the world, the so-called egg game, both on the day of the spring equinox, the egg is standing on the horizontal plane, the ancients believe that during the spring equinox, everything is in a balanced state, at this time the success rate of "egg stand" is higher than usual time, although it is not easy to stand the egg on the horizontal plane, but this game is also very interesting, very suitable.
During the spring equinox, people will also go to qingqing, outing, ancestor worship, put paper kites (the ancient name of kites), pick spring vegetables (now people call wild amaranth, Lingnan Chaoshan area called 'spring artemisia') ...