Introduction: Why Gaze Upon Lichun from the Vantage of the "Year's Beginning"$1

Between Heaven and Earth, all things have their season; and the beginning of the seasons is called spring. When we speak of Lichun (立春, the Beginning of Spring) today, we tend to treat it merely as an unremarkable mark on the calendar—a certain date on which, by custom, one eats a spring pancake and thereby considers the season duly observed. Yet such an understanding sorely fails to honor the millennia of labor our ancestors poured into observing the heavens above and the earth below, and into "respectfully bestowing the seasons upon the people." Lichun is by no means a simple temporal marker; it is the crystallization of the ancients' fundamental apprehension of the workings of the Way of Heaven, the faint yet solemn threshold across which the cycle of the years is renewed.

Why examine Lichun specifically from the vantage of the "year's beginning"$2 Because within the intricate system of the Twenty-Four Solar Terms, Lichun occupies a singular and irreplaceable position—it is the first of the "Four Beginnings" (四立), the start of the year, the critical juncture at which yang qi, long confined beneath the earth, finally breaks through the soil and ascends to the surface. The remaining twenty-three solar terms may all be described as "processes" occurring within the year; Lichun alone is the "origination" from which all these processes become possible. To understand Lichun is to understand why the Chinese regarded "beginnings" with such solemn gravity, and why they held such a grand ceremony of welcome at the outset of every new year.

The Book of Documents (Shangshu), in its "Canon of Yao" (Yao Dian), states: "He then charged Xi and He, in reverent accordance with august Heaven, to calculate and delineate the sun, moon, and stars, and respectfully to bestow the seasons upon the people" (乃命羲和，钦若昊天，历象日月星辰，敬授民时). These few words convey the fundamental reason for the birth of the solar terms—"respectfully bestowing the seasons upon the people." The character "respectfully" (敬, jing) and the character "bestow" (授, shou) together elevate astronomical observation to a height bordering on the religious. One observes the heavens not to satisfy curiosity, but out of "reverence"—awe before the Way of Heaven; one bestows the seasons not for mere convenience of daily life, but as an act of "conferral"—solemnly transmitting the will of Heaven to the human world. And among all the seasonal moments requiring such reverence and conferral, the foremost and most crucial is "spring"—for the entire year's agricultural labor begins with spring, and to miss the season of spring plowing is to court a full year's poor harvest, even famine.

Herein lies a profound question: why did the ancients choose to place the year's "beginning" at Lichun, rather than elsewhere$3 A year is a circle, and a circle, properly speaking, has no fixed starting point—one may begin anywhere along its circumference. Yet the ancients specifically chose Lichun as the node marking the year's beginning. What cosmological considerations lie behind this choice$4

The Zhouyi (Book of Changes), in the "Tuan Commentary" on the Qian hexagram, states: "Great indeed is the originating power of Qian! All things owe to it their beginning; it is the master of Heaven" (大哉乾元，万物资始，乃统天). This "owing their beginning" (资始) means that all things, by relying upon the originating qi of Qian, are able to commence their lives. Lichun is precisely the moment at which this force of "origination" between Heaven and Earth begins to operate in full. In the eyes of the ancients, time was not a homogeneous, evenly flowing river, but something possessed of rhythm, cadence, and qualitative distinctions; and the season of spring—Lichun above all—was the very source from which the entire flow of time "set out anew." "To establish" (立, li) means to found, to institute. Lichun is thus "the founding of spring," "the beginning of the year." Crossing this threshold, the operating principles governing all things between Heaven and Earth turn from "storing" toward "generating," and all things are renewed.

This article proceeds from the core thought of the pre-Qin Confucian and Daoist schools, and traces further back into more ancient myth and folk tradition, to offer as thorough an interpretation as possible of the solar term Lichun. We seek to understand not merely what Lichun is, but why it is so; not merely what the ancients did at Lichun, but why they did it. Through this layered process of inquiry, we may perhaps once again touch that ancient world in which all things possessed spirit and Heaven and humanity resonated with one another—a world in which a gust of east wind, an insect breaking through the soil, a sheet of newly melted thin ice, were all solemn signals sent forth by the Way of Heaven.