二十四节气是什么？
What are the 24 solar terms?
Name: ________________ Date: ________
2022年2月4日晚上，北京冬奥会的开幕式是从一段特别的倒计时开始的。一共二十四秒，每一秒代表一个节气，同时也代表这是第二十四届冬奥会。最后，烟花在夜空中拼出了两个汉字：“立春”。原来，那一天正好是春天开始的日子。
那么，节气到底是什么？简单地说，古人根据太阳的位置，把一年分成二十四段，每一段大约十五天，每一个分界点都有自己的名字。很多人以为中国的传统日历只看月亮，其实这二十四个日子跟月亮没有关系，完全是跟着太阳走的。所以，它们在公历上的日期几乎每年都一样：立春总在2月4日左右，冬至总在12月22日左右。
为什么要跟着太阳走呢？古代的中国是一个农业社会，在黄河边种地的农民最需要知道的是：什么时候该播种，什么时候该收割庄稼。月亮是圆是缺，对种庄稼没有太大的帮助，太阳却决定着天气的冷暖和雨水的多少。古人先找出了春分、秋分、夏至和冬至这四个最重要的日子，后来又一步步细分，到两千多年前，二十四个节气已经全部写进了历法。
这些名字本身就像农民写的日记。“惊蛰”的意思是，春雷响了，躲在土里一冬天的虫子被惊醒了；“谷雨”是说，雨水来了，正好帮助粮食生长；“芒种”提醒人们，该抓紧时间种地了。为了记住这二十四个名字，孩子们从小就会背一首顺口溜，第一句是“春雨惊春清谷天”，说的就是春天的六个节气。四句话，二十八个字，一年就全都装了进去。
今天，大多数人已经不种地了，可节气并没有被忘记。清明既是节气，也是扫墓的节日；冬至那天，北方很多家庭要吃饺子。这套方法后来还传到了朝鲜半岛、日本和越南。2016年，二十四节气被列入了联合国教科文组织的人类非物质文化遗产名录。下次你在手机上看到“今日立秋”，不妨抬头看看天空：两千多年来，中国人一直是这样跟着太阳生活的。
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 开幕式 | kāimùshì | opening ceremony |
| 代表 | dàibiǎo | representative; delegate |
| 届 | jiè | classifier for sessions, terms and graduating classes (as in 第十届) |
| 拼 | pīn | to go all out; to risk one's life |
| 位置 | wèizhì | position; place; location |
| 传统 | chuántǒng | tradition; traditional; conventional |
| 日历 | rìlì | calendar |
| 古代 | gǔdài | ancient times; antiquity |
| 农业 | nóngyè | agriculture; farming |
| 农民 | nóngmín | peasant; farmer |
| 圆 | yuán | round; circular; circle |
| 雨水 | yúshuǐ | rain; rainwater |
English (for the teacher)
On the evening of 4 February 2022, the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics began with an unusual countdown. It lasted twenty-four seconds: each second stood for one solar term, and also for these being the twenty-fourth Winter Games. At the end, fireworks spelled out two Chinese characters in the night sky: 立春, “start of spring”. That day, it turned out, was exactly the day spring begins.
So what exactly is a solar term? Put simply, the ancient Chinese used the sun's position to divide the year into twenty-four stretches of about fifteen days each, and every dividing point has its own name. Many people think China's traditional calendar only follows the moon, but these twenty-four days have nothing to do with the moon: they follow the sun completely. That's why they fall on almost the same Western calendar dates every year: the Start of Spring is always around 4 February, and the winter solstice around 22 December.
Why follow the sun? Ancient China was a farming society, and what farmers by the Yellow River most needed to know was when to sow and when to bring in the grain. Whether the moon is full or not is not much help in farming, but the sun decides how hot or cold it is and how much rain falls. People first found the four most important days, the spring and autumn equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices, then divided the year more finely step by step, and by more than two thousand years ago all twenty-four terms had been written into the official calendar.
The names themselves read like a farmer's diary. Jingzhe, “awakening of insects”, means spring thunder has come and the insects hiding in the soil have been startled awake; Guyu, “grain rain”, says the rain has come just in time to help the grain grow; Mangzhong, “grain in ear”, reminds people to hurry and get planting. To remember all twenty-four names, children learn a short rhyme by heart, whose first line, 春雨惊春清谷天, names the six terms of spring. Four lines, twenty-eight characters, and the whole year is packed in.
Today most people no longer farm, but the solar terms have not been forgotten. Qingming is both a solar term and the festival for sweeping family graves, and on the winter solstice many families in the north eat dumplings. This way of marking the year also later spread to the Korean peninsula, Japan and Vietnam. In 2016 the twenty-four solar terms were added to UNESCO's list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Next time your phone says “Today is the Start of Autumn”, look up at the sky: for more than two thousand years, this is how the Chinese have lived by the sun.