"Book of Time": The ancient Chinese called history "Spring and Autumn" because the crops were ripe in spring and autumn

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"Book of Time" by Yu Shicun

"Flowers and wood pipes are seasonal, and birdsong is reported to farmers." Flowers, trees, animals and birds all move according to the seasons, so their regular movements are regarded as an important symbol of seasonal solar terms. The ability of the biological world to adjust and time is its innate ability to exist, and timing is the process of organisms regulating their own life activities so that they start, carry out and terminate in a certain timing.

The book describes in detail the origin of each solar term, the origin of the solar terms, the corresponding phenology of the solar terms, the poetry about each solar term, and the humanistic history. At the same time, in each solar term, the effect on the body, and the things that human beings should pay attention to are outlined, which can be called an autobiography of time.

The twenty-four solar terms are a unique contribution to Chinese civilization. With the help of solar terms, farmers freeze the year into the cycle system of crop growth such as farming, fertilization, irrigation, and harvesting, and freeze time, production, and life to the state of corresponding and even unity between people and the Heavenly Dao.

Selected excerpts

1. Young people, your job is to level the land, not to worry about the time. You do the March and April things, and in August and September you have your own answers.

2. The ancient Chinese called "history" "Spring and Autumn", because the crops are born in spring and ripe in autumn, spring is equivalent to the cause of history, autumn is equivalent to the fruit of history, the cycle of spring and autumn is time, and the cycle of time is history.

3. China has a great ceremony, so it is called xia; there is the beauty of the clothing chapter, which is called Hua.

4. Chinese medicine believes that after the rain festival, with the increase of rainfall, the evil of cold and wet is most likely to trap the spleen. Spring cold material steep, moisture is generally sandwiched "cold" to come, so before and after the rain must pay attention to keep warm, do not get cold, to eat less raw and cold things, in order to take care of the spleen and stomach yang. At the same time, it is also necessary to prevent "spring cold".

5. Bitterness is the original taste of summer, the original taste of the south, and the original taste of youth. Youth needs to suffer, summer needs to suffer, southern food has a bitter taste, often add sugar to neutralize and freshen. Correspondingly, the original taste of spring (East) is sour, the original taste of autumn (West) is spicy, and the original taste of winter (North) is salty; life must deeply taste the essence of the present in the coordinates of time and space. This is the logic of space-time, the logic of life.

6. Dong Zhongshu believes: "When there are four times in the sky, the king has four governments, and celebration, reward, punishment, and punishment correspond to spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Providence is "Ren De does not allow punishment" and "first morality and then punishment", so it should be rewarded in spring and summer, and executed in autumn and winter. The Zhou Li is the earliest work on institutional arrangement and design in China, in which the Si Kou in charge of punishment is called "Qiu Guan".

7. Meteorological data confirm that Xiao Han is the lowest temperature solar term, and only a few years of Large Cold temperature is lower than Xiao Han.

8. In the cold dew season, there is a festival, that is, the Nine Chongyang Festival at the beginning of the ninth month of the lunar calendar. "Nine" is a yang number in the I Ching, and the first nine days of September are exactly the sun and moon and yang, and the two nines are heavy, so it is also called "heavy yang" or "heavy nine". The theory of nine nine is extremely meaningful in Chinese culture, ninety-nine to one, there is the meaning of the end; nine nine eighty-one, symbolizes the ultimate. The extreme of things must be reversed, the nine is the yang to the extreme, and further down it will return to the one, and the meeting of the nine and nine yangs is both auspicious and unlucky in this sense.

9. Among the many ingredients in summer, ginger may be the most important. "Rice is not fragrant, eat ginger", "eat radish in winter and eat ginger in summer", "three slices of ginger in the morning, race to drink ginseng soup" "Men can not be 100 days without ginger". Confucius famously said: "Do not withdraw ginger food, do not eat much." ”

10. One morning, the Qianlong Emperor inadvertently chatted with his ministers and asked them what they had eaten for breakfast, and one of the ministers replied that his family was not very wealthy, and he had only eaten a few eggs casually. Qianlong was shocked when he heard this, and inhaled a cool breath: "Oh my God, an egg costs ten silver, and you don't dare to eat more, you are still crying poor!" "By the time of the Guangxu Emperor, the price of eggs in the court had become thirty-two pieces of silver, in fact, only three or four copper plates were sold in the market.

11. In the eyes of the ancients, if the cold trumpet birds are still chirping in the snow festival, there are demons in the country to confuse the people; if the tigers still do not mate at this time, it means that the generals in the army are not harmonious; if the horsetail grass does not grow, then there is a phenomenon of official monopoly, and some people believe that "if the lychee cannot stand up, then the country will be on fire."