Chapter 11: Guyu and Farming — Rain Giving Birth to the Hundred Grains, Not Violating the Farming Season

Section 1: "Rain Giving Birth to the Hundred Grains" — The Lifeline of Agrarian Civilization

Guyu, with respect to farming, is a solar term upon which the very lifeline of survival depends. Its name, "rain giving birth to the hundred grains," is itself the most condensed statement of an agricultural program—this rain exists to "give birth to" the hundred grains.

Why is Guyu's rain so crucial$27 Because sowing, transplanting, and coaxing forth seedlings all depend, to an extreme degree, on the proper coordination of moisture and soil warmth. Before Guyu, the earth's qi may not yet be fully warm, and the frosty chill may not yet be fully gone, so sowing carries risk; after Guyu, as summer approaches, temperatures rise sharply and evaporation intensifies, raising the danger of insufficient soil moisture. Only at the season of Guyu—when the frosty chill has ceased, the earth's qi has warmed, and the rains are abundant—do water temperature and soil warmth align exactly, offering a heaven-sent opportunity for sowing and coaxing forth seedlings.

To miss this window is, as the saying goes, "when a person misses the moment, the earth misses him for a year"—an entire year's harvest would suffer. And so the farmers' proverb says, "around Guyu, plant melons and sow beans," and also, "if flowers are not planted at Guyu, one's heart feels as if crabs were crawling within"—depicting, with vivid precision, the urgency of Guyu's rush to sow.

This places the entire weight of "respectfully bestowing the seasons upon the people" squarely upon this solar term of Guyu. The ultimate purpose of the ancients' millennia of observing the heavens, scrutinizing the earth, and calculating the calendar was precisely to seize accurately upon a farming juncture such as Guyu, sowing the seed in time within the heaven-sent moment of "rain giving birth to the hundred grains." The entire history of Chinese astronomy and calendrics is, at bottom, the great learning—bearing upon life and death, survival and ruin—devoted to never missing a rain such as Guyu's, never missing a year's grain.

Section 2: Not Violating the Farming Season — Master Meng's Agricultural-Political Wisdom

What is most feared in Guyu's urgent sowing$28 Missing the season. And within Confucian political wisdom, the most forceful teaching addressing this fear of "missing the season" is Master Meng's principle of "not violating the farming season."

The "King Hui of Liang, Part I" chapter of the Mencius records Master Meng's words: "If the farming seasons are not violated, there will be more grain than can be consumed; if fine-meshed nets are not allowed into the ponds and pools, there will be more fish and turtles than can be consumed; if axes and hatchets enter the mountain forests only at the proper season, there will be more timber than can be used. When grain, fish, and turtles are more than can be consumed, and timber is more than can be used, this enables the people to nurture the living and mourn the dead without regret. To nurture the living and mourn the dead without regret is the beginning of the kingly Way."

Observe the exceedingly fundamental position in which Master Meng places "not violating the farming season"—it is the primary condition for there being "more grain than can be consumed," the very foundation for "enabling the people to nurture the living and mourn the dead without regret," and moreover "the beginning of the kingly Way"! In Master Meng's view, the starting point of the kingly Way (ideal governance) is not some lofty moral preaching, but the plainest of matters: not delaying the farmers' farming season, so that they may grow more grain than they can consume.

And Guyu is precisely one of the junctures of "farming season" that tolerates no violation whatsoever. "Not violating the farming season" bears its sharpest, most concrete implication precisely at the season of Guyu: the ruler must absolutely not conscript labor or mobilize the people's strength at the moment of Guyu's urgent sowing, but must leave this fleeting farming season, wrested from Heaven itself, entirely and completely to the farmers in the fields. To safeguard Guyu's farming season is to safeguard "the beginning of the kingly Way." Master Meng's teaching here raises, from a philosophical height, a protective canopy of "do not seize the farming season" over the farmers engaged in Guyu's urgent sowing.

Section 3: The Governance of Mulberry and Silk — The Other Half of "Men Plow, Women Weave"

Guyu's farm work is not only "plowing" (sowing grain), but also "mulberry" (rearing silkworms)—this is the other half of agrarian civilization's "men plow, women weave."

We have already discussed at length, in the section on "the hoopoe descends upon the mulberry," the weight of mulberry and silk. Here let us add a further point from the perspective of "agricultural governance": in the ancients' governance of the state, "encouraging agriculture" and "encouraging sericulture" were two great affairs of government, given equal weight. The third month of spring's ordinances in the "Monthly Ordinances" of the Book of Rites—"cut down no mulberry or cudrania trees," "encourage the work of silk-rearing"—constitute the state-level "governance of encouraging mulberry." It protects, through legal ordinance (forbidding the felling of mulberry and cudrania trees), the mulberry-tree resources upon which sericulture depends for its survival, and encourages and sanctifies the work of silkworm-rearing through the demonstration of the queen consort's own mulberry-gathering.

Why did the state take "encouraging mulberry" so solemnly$1 Because "clothing" and "food" are equally important, and neither can be dispensed with. A state that values only the growing of grain and neglects the rearing of silkworms may fill its people's stomachs, yet leave them without clothing to guard against the cold. And so true good governance, true "humane governance," must give equal weight to plowing and mulberry, must attend to both food and clothing together.

The solar term of Guyu happens to embody, in a single body, both "the beginning of plowing" (rain giving birth to the hundred grains, sowing) and "the beginning of mulberry" (the hoopoe descending upon the mulberry, silkworm-rearing beginning). It reminds those who govern: this rain of late spring must both coax forth the grain to nourish the people's "food," and protect the mulberry to prepare the people's "clothing"—only when plowing and mulberry-tending proceed together is the Way of "nurturing the people" complete.

Section 4: The Covenant Between Heaven and Humanity in Farming — Human Affairs Must Accord with Heaven's Timing

The farming of Guyu is, at its root, a precise coordination of "human affairs" with "Heaven's timing," the fulfillment of a "covenant between Heaven and humanity."

Heaven provides "rain" (timely rain) and "warmth" (frost's cessation)—this is Heaven's portion; humanity must, in a timely manner, "sow," "transplant," and "tend"—this is humanity's portion. If Heaven does not send down timely rain, then however diligent humanity may be, there will be no harvest; if humanity misses the farming season, then however much rain Heaven may send down, it will be in vain.

Only when Heaven and humanity each fulfill their own portion, precisely coordinated—Heaven sending down timely rain at its proper moment, humanity sowing the grain at its proper moment—can "rain giving birth to the hundred grains" truly be realized. And so the farming of Guyu is the most typical instance of "cooperation between Heaven and humanity": it relies neither purely on Heaven (sitting idle and awaiting Heaven's grace), nor purely on humanity (humanity conquering Heaven), but rather on humanity according with Heaven's timing while exhausting human effort, Heaven and humanity joining together to accomplish their shared task.

This is precisely the plainest, most solid foundation of Chinese agrarian civilization's cosmology of "the unity of Heaven and humanity." Every time the ancients bent down to sow seed in the fields at Guyu, they were fulfilling an ancient "covenant between Heaven and humanity": since Heaven has already sent down its timely rain and withdrawn the cold frost, I must in turn, in a timely manner, entrust the seed to this soil that Heaven's grace has already moistened. In this single act of bending down, of sowing seed, humanity and Heaven complete, in the soil of Guyu, the most affectionate and most practical handshake of the entire year.