spring equinox
Today was the spring equinox - at least for those of us on the civilised side of the equator. Autumn equinox for those of you in the north, of course.
You know those fascinations that are really interesting but not quite interesting enough for you to dive into? That's how I feel about calendars. I was, of course, aware of the existence of different calendars before I moved to China, but living in a country that runs two (actually, more than that) calendars simultaneously kind of brought it into a bit more focus.
Of course, there are solar calendars, based on the earth's orbit around the sun; and lunar calendars, based on the moon's cycle. The two do not match up. The Chinese calendar is a hybrid - a lunar calendar base fixed to the solar year. A leap month added every two or three years helps with the fixing.
I discovered, not long after having moved to China and having bought a Chinese dictionary, that the Chinese calendar has these things called "solar terms/节气/jiéqi" - twenty four of them, roughly one every two to three weeks, marking the transitions through the seasons. These solar terms include the winter and summer solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes.
Growing up in Aotearoa you get used to traditional celebrations of festivals being out of whack with our seasons. The Gregorian calendar, like the Chinese calendar, was built for the northern hemisphere. Mostly it's just things like, "yeah, snow, because it's winter back in Europe". There are, of course, Christian explanations for things at Easter that look an awful lot like pagan fertility symbols one would expect when celebrating the start of spring.
I get the feeling that the connection to the cycle of the seasons has been forgotten. somehow, or dropped along the wayside. The Chinese calendar seems to have that connection built right in. Of course, it helps that the solar terms are part of what keeps the base lunar calendar tied to the solar year.
At several points in my time in China I did think of trying to observe the solar terms through the course of the year. This wouldn't have been difficult - calendars sold in China generally have both the Gregorian and Chinese calendars printed on them, and the Chinese calendars mark the solar terms. But that's where the fascination bumps up against the interest-level. Yes, it is fascinating all the myriad ways human cultures have devised to mark the passage of time and the cycle of the seasons, but is it interesting enough to maintain an observation of two calendars simultaneously throughout the course of a year? So far I have failed.
It's also interesting how the calendars are named in Chinese. The Gregorian calendar is generally referred to as 阳历/yánglì - literally "solar calendar". The Chinese calendar could be called 阴历/yīnlì - "lunar calendar", but I seem to see and hear it referred to most often as 农历/nónglì - "agricultural calendar". That "agricultural calendar" also has an opposite - 公历/gōnglì - "public calendar", meaning the Gregorian calendar. I like the "agricultural calendar" name, it's a reminder that the solar terms are not there just to help synchronise the calendar with the solar year, but also to mark the cycle of the seasons, which is really important for farming. That's something that we seem to have lost touch with in our urban lives where supermarkets supply "fresh" fruit and veges year-round.
Anyway, that's enough idle musing on things I don't really understand anywhere near well enough to be posting publicly.