What are the meanings and customs of beginning of spring?

Beginning of spring, as its name implies, is the beginning of spring. Temperature and precipitation are constantly changing all year round, and in order to divide the turning point of temperature and precipitation, the ancients created 24 solar terms, each of which represents different characteristics of temperature and precipitation.

Beginning of spring is the first solar term every year, representing the arrival of spring. The temperature will gradually increase and the precipitation will increase accordingly. Everything on the earth will slowly recover, and people will be ready for farming.

Folk customs in early spring

Beginning of spring is the beginning of spring, so whenever the solar term comes in beginning of spring, people should celebrate it, because it represents the beginning of the four seasons and is a very important day.

Specific folk activities to celebrate beginning of spring include welcoming the Spring Festival, beating spring cows, biting spring, grabbing spring, visiting the countryside, sending off spring, posting Spring Festival couplets, worshipping the traditional Chinese New Year, eating spring rolls, eating spring cakes and carrots, keeping healthy and preventing cold, and preventing diseases. The ancients thought that beginning of spring season was the time when all diseases were prone to occur, so we must pay attention to prevent infectious diseases caused by bacteria and viruses.

The origin of beginning of spring

Beginning of spring belongs to the twenty-four solar terms, so the origin of beginning of spring is equal to the origin of the twenty-four solar terms. At the earliest time, there were 24 solar terms in ancient times. At that time, people divided the solar terms by observing the Big Dipper.

But it was not until the Qin and Han Dynasties that the twenty-four solar terms had a specific time and name. This form of twenty-four solar terms has been used until modern times. Until the prosperity of science and technology, people learned more astronomical knowledge and adopted more accurate solar terms calculation methods to adjust the time division of the 24 solar terms.