Zhu Shilin, male, born in August 1947, is a member of the Communist Party of China, a college student, a member of the Shanghai Chongming Literature and History Research Association, and a member of the Shanghai Chongming Writers Association. He has obtained Shanghai Senior Economist Qualification Certificate, Teacher Qualification Certificate and Class 1 (Senior) Commodity Operator Qualification Certificate.
He started his career in August 1968 and retired in August 2007. Before retirement, he was a cadre of Chongming County Supply and Marketing Cooperative. During his work, he has published many papers and articles in publications and magazines such as "Treasury of Chinese Contemporary Thought", "Shanghai Business Economy" and "Shanghai Residence". Dozens of articles and poems written after his retirement have also been published in newspapers and magazines such as Oriental Urban and Rural Daily, China Community Daily, China Newspaper Clippings, Community, Trade Union Expo and Speed Reading. © This article is published with authorization, please contact this official account for reprinting, submission and consultation.
Interesting talk about the proverb of the agricultural time, "It's hard to do the day in April"
For hundreds of years, people living on Chongming Island, at the mouth of the East China Sea in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, have summarized many philosophical and popular farm proverbs and meteorological proverbs about the weather according to their own living habits and production practices. Today, I will talk about the origin and meaning of the proverb "It's hard to do a day in April".
As we all know, heaven is supreme, and it is always free and alone in nature, not bound by anyone, and not subject to human will. Legend has it that in ancient times, the sky was full of loopholes, and every time it rained, wherever there were loopholes, the rainwater poured down, causing crops to be flooded, and the people were washed away by the flood and even lost their lives. Seeing this situation, Nuwa began to repair the loopholes in the heavens, and repaired the holes in the sky seamlessly, which is the legend of "Nuwa mending the sky". Another legend says that in ancient times, there were ten suns in the sky, and people at that time were like living by the fire, and they had to sweat from the fiery red sun day and night, not to mention the crops that were dried up, and even the people living on the earth were burned and dying. Seeing that the scorching sun is about to destroy all living things on earth, a hero appears. One day he held a large bow weighing hundreds of kilograms and a long arrow weighing tens of kilograms, and when he put the arrow on the bow and pulled the bowstring with his big strong hand, he saw a ball of fire falling from the sky to the ground, and when there was only the last sun left, the sky began to speak, asking the hero's men to show mercy and leave this last sun, and at the same time the sky also assured the people that they would strive to benefit the living people. This is the story of the myth and legend of "Hou Yi shooting the sun". Legend has it that the heavens will never do whatever they want and be lawless again. A sun and a moon in the sky serve people in obscurity and obscurity, and there are four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter in a day, and it is also divided into 24 solar terms according to the characteristics of agricultural time. In life and production, as long as people work diligently and cultivate the sown crops reasonably, then "plant melons and get melons, plant beans and get beans", and there will always be a good harvest and a bumper harvest in the autumn harvest season. This is what people often say, "God rewards hard work". If people disobey the will of heaven, they will be punished by heaven, and if they are serious, they will be punished by "five thunderstorms from heaven".
There are twelve months in a year, and the fourth month of the lunar calendar is the most difficult month for the sky to do things and be the most difficult to be a person. The people who have lived on Chongming Island for a long time summarized two sentences to support the proverb "it is difficult to do the day in April". These two sentences are: the seedlings should be sun, the sun should be rainy, the silkworms should be mild, and the wheat should be cold. The following is a detailed analysis of the meaning of these two sentences based on my own understanding. Historically, the fourth month of the lunar calendar is the alternation of late spring and early summer, the weather is changeable, the wind and clouds are unpredictable; sometimes the temperature rises as high as 30 degrees or even more than 30 degrees, sometimes the temperature drops sharply below 10 degrees; sometimes the weather is very good and sunny in the morning, and in the afternoon or evening it is suddenly affected by the cold air from the north to the south, and the wind blows violently, and the climate becomes dark and humid; sometimes there is haze and sandstorms, sometimes there are thunders and lightning, and then there is the weather of "spring thunder and snow and ice" appears...... This harsh and changeable climate is very unfavorable for crops, and it is also a great feeling of "making things worse" for some organisms and animals, and it also adds a lot of difficulties to people's lives and production......
Rice and three wheat (the general name of yuan wheat, barley and wheat) are the main food crops of the people of Chongming. Every year after the Qingming Festival, farmers should begin to screen rice seeds, soak seeds to promote germination, and when the valley rain season arrives, the pre-selected and demarcated fields will be used as the seedling fields for falling grain (generally according to the ratio of 1:10 to determine the sowing area of the seedling field, that is, ten acres of rice field to settle one mu of seedling field). In the fourth month of the lunar calendar, it is the growth period when rice seeds are spitting green in the seedling field, and the seedlings at this time need a lot of light, which means that I hope that the weather will be good, the sun will shine, and the sunshine will be sufficient.
In order to catch fish and shrimp and other aquatic products, they braided fishing nets and kneaded hemp ropes (straw ropes are easy to break), and in order to reduce costs and inconvenient transportation, they planted stalks on the reclaimed land, and after harvesting in autumn, they peeled off the skin from the stalks and soaked them and woven them into twine ropes of varying thicknesses. The fourth month of the lunar calendar is the period when these seedlings grow, and the seedlings do not need sunlight during the production period, and the most suitable climate is light rain or rainy.
In addition to attaching importance to fishery production and agricultural production, there are also some farming families who attach importance to the sideline production of sericulture. In the old society, the poor families raised chickens, ducks and sheep in a single household, and did not regard these as sideline production (few people raised pigs, only the landlords and rich peasants could afford to raise cattle, because these big livestock cost a lot of money), and the eggs laid by ordinary peasant households raising chickens and ducks were reluctant to eat by themselves, and they had to accumulate them day by day and take them to the market to exchange money for money and then buy oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, sugar and other items, and slaughtered their own chickens, ducks, geese and other livestock during the New Year's festival or major celebrations (such as children's weddings, old people's birthdays, etc.).
In those days, farmers planted a few mulberry trees in front of their houses, behind their houses or by the ditch (the survival rate of mulberry trees was higher than that of ordinary trees), and hundreds or thousands of silkworm babies were raised at home with bamboo sieves or rattan trays. Every lunar month, it is the white and chubby silkworm babies who need mild weather, afraid of the cold and humid climate, because after a while, these silkworm babies will stop eating and turn to the silk cocoon stage. If the temperature is cold, it will directly affect the life of the silkworm baby and even die prematurely and cannot spin silk as a cocoon.
In the fourth month of the lunar calendar every year, the three wheat, which grows in the farmland (most people in Chongming plant yuan wheat, and less barley and wheat), enter the spring season after experiencing the test of the severe cold in midwinter, and begin to grow vigorously and head and fill grain. At this time, the wheat seedlings do not need to be exposed to the sun, but need a drizzle and a humid climate.
The above is the author's annotation on the meaning of the two sentences that the ancestors have highly summarized for hundreds of years on "it is difficult to do the sky and the April day", "the seedlings want the sun (sun), the silkworms want to rain, the silkworms want to be mild, and the wheat needs to be cold".
"It's hard to be a day in April", this anthropomorphic agricultural proverb, fully reflects the wisdom of our ancestors on Chongming Island.
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