Introduction: Why Contemplate "the Start of Autumn" at Summer's Height$1

Between heaven and earth, all things have their season. When we speak of Liqiu (立秋, "Start of Autumn") today, a certain perplexity often arises — the heat has not yet abated, cicadas cry at their most strident, the sun still scorches the land, so why did the ancients choose precisely this moment to declare that "autumn has arrived"$2 This puzzlement is itself evidence of the deep rift between us and our forebears. In the modern sensibility, "season" is nearly synonymous with "temperature" — heat means summer, coolness means autumn. Yet in the cosmology of our ancestors, seasons were never mere aliases for temperature; they marked qualitative transformations in the qi (vital breath) of heaven and earth. Liqiu stands amid lingering heat precisely because what it marks is not the bodily sensation of coolness, but a subtler, more fundamental turning — the watershed where the qi of heaven and earth shifts from "growth" to "gathering."

Why should we re-examine Liqiu from pre-Qin and high-antiquity perspectives$3 Because that was the era in which this solar term was born — an era when its meaning had not yet been simplified or obscured by later phenological experience. In that age, "autumn" was not merely a season but a cosmic virtue — signifying convergence, maturation, solemn killing, punishment, melancholy, and the return to concealment. Liqiu is the inception of all this. To understand Liqiu is to understand the deepest, most somber, and most solemn spiritual vein in Chinese culture — the wisdom of "gathering," the justice of "killing," and the dignity of "grief."

The Book of Documents (Shangshu) records in the "Canon of Yao" (Yao dian): "He thereupon commanded Xi and He, in reverent accordance with majestic Heaven, to calculate and delineate the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, and to respectfully bestow upon the people the seasons." These few words lay bare the fundamental reason for the birth of the solar terms — "respectfully bestowing the seasons." The word "respectfully" (jing 敬) and the word "bestow" (shou 授) elevate astronomical observation to a nearly religious height. Among the four seasons, the "time" of autumn is especially difficult to grasp — for its arrival has neither the longest shadow at the summer solstice to rely upon nor the equal division of day and night at the equinox to confirm it. Determining Liqiu required the ancients to possess an almost faith-like apprehension of the Way of Heaven: they believed that even while the earth remained scorching, the unseen pivot of yin and yang overhead had already quietly turned. This conviction in an "invisible turning" is the most moving aspect of our ancestors' cosmology.

This question touches the very core of pre-Qin thought. In the eyes of the ancients, time was not a river flowing in uniform quality, but possessed rhythm, cadence, and qualitative distinctions. The time of summer and the time of autumn differed not only in temperature; their qi differed, their de (virtue) differed, and the activities proper to each differed as well. The qi of summer is "growth" — expansion, bestowal, generosity; the qi of autumn is "gathering" — convergence, solemn rectification, decisive judgment. Liqiu marks the solemn juncture where these two diametrically opposed cosmic forces exchange dominion.

The "Wenyan" commentary on the Qian hexagram in the Yijing (Book of Changes) states: "The great person aligns their virtue with heaven and earth, their brightness with sun and moon, their sequence with the four seasons, their auspiciousness and misfortune with spirits and gods." To "align one's sequence with the four seasons" means that one's conduct, emotions, and even states of mind should adjust in accordance with the procession of the seasons. If Lixia (Start of Summer) is the threshold from the "birth" of spring into the "growth" of summer, then Liqiu is the threshold from the "growth" of summer into the "gathering" of autumn. Cross the gate of Lixia, and all things surge outward in unrestrained exuberance; cross the gate of Liqiu, and all things begin to converge and consolidate inward. This is a reversal of direction, a turning of the vital mechanism — henceforth heaven and earth shift from openness to closure, from bestowal to gathering.

What is particularly thought-provoking is that the hexagram associated with Liqiu is precisely that tension-laden "Pi" hexagram (否, ䷋) of the Yijing — "Heaven and earth do not interact, and the myriad things do not communicate." This stands as the mirror image of the "Tai" hexagram (泰, ䷊) assigned to the first month of spring — "Heaven and earth interact, and the myriad things communicate." One "interaction," one "non-interaction" — placing Liqiu and Lichun (Start of Spring) at opposite poles of the cosmic cycle. This essay will take this as its pivot, departing from the core thought of both Confucian and Daoist traditions of the pre-Qin era, and reaching back to still more ancient mythological and folk traditions, to offer as thorough an interpretation of the solar term Liqiu as possible. We seek not only to know what Liqiu is, but to ask why it is so; not only to learn what the ancients did at Liqiu, but to understand why they did it. In the course of this inquiry, perhaps we may once again touch that ancient world in which all things possessed spirit, heaven and humanity resonated, and life and death followed their appointed order.