It’s the Time and the Season…for Planting Nuts

The 24 Solar Terms or Nodes of Weather in the Simplest Terms Possible

By James Fee

Explaining time is never easy. There’s a lot of astronomical jargon to wade through: equinoxes, solstices, ecliptics, the longitude of the celestial sphere, the perihelion, the flux capacitor and the bizarre logic of Back to the Future.

In China, as there are currently two calendars, the Gregorian and the traditional Chinese calendar, this task gets twice as hard.

So we’ll simplify and focus on a portion of the traditional Chinese calendar: The 24 Solar terms or the 24 jieqi (nodes of weather).

The 24 jieqi are responsible for that curious phenomenon known as “Laowai freezing at what the Chinese say is the beginning of Spring.”

In the western calendar, the seasons begin at the equinoxes—the days where the hours of light and dark are equal—and at the solstices—the longest and shortest days of the year.

But according to the 24 solar terms, the seasons begin at the midpoints between the equinoxes and the solstices. Thus, in China, Spring begins around February 4th—the time when the occidental groundhog decides we have a few more weeks of winter.

Thereafter the year is divided into 23 more terms, 2 terms making up a month. Each term marks 15 degrees of movement on the ecliptic about the longitude of the sun—the orbit of the earth.

The traditional lunar calendar, as it tracked the movements of the moon, wasn’t all that helpful to farmers. Thus the jieqi were grafted onto the traditional calendar to indicate the times when it is best to plant each crop—the times to reap, the times to sow-- the understanding of how to everything, there is a season—turn, turn, turn…

The 24 jieqi track the rhythm of nature across the land, over the seasons: the falling of rain, the insects awakening, the heat of summer…

It is still used today, in largely the same way it has been since its creation in 104 B.C.

“Most of us use it. It gives us a general idea of when to do stuff,” said Tang An Ning, a farmer in Northern Guangdong, and also Virginia’s uncle. “Since this calendar was made in the Yellow River Valley, we have to make adjustments. But it’s still pretty useful.”

“It’s the time of Insects Awaken. It’s time to plant peanuts,” he added.

And it’s that easy. I’m not sure if farmers know about the ecliptic plane, but they are in tune with the seasons. And if they get out of tune, they look at the calendar. And then they go plant peanuts.

There is a plaza, Seasons Square, in Meilin Park. It is in a nook right off the main path. There you will find a replica of an ancient sundial encircled by 4 columns, each representing a different season, Those columns are in turn encircled by a ring of concrete imprinted with the 24 jieqi.

The day we went to Meilin Park, families were picnicking in the shade of centuries- old litchi trees. Children were playing by the ornamental pond, wading in, scooping up tadpoles in goldfish nets. Teenage fashion victims were loitering. Parents were taking pictures of their babies in strollers. Retirees sat in the shade, practicing music, sawing away at the erhu, finally finding the time to teach old hands new tricks.

I would recommend a visit to Seasons Square, if only because it made time seem very simple.

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About James Fee