Chapter 1: The Original Meanings of "Chun" and "Li": A Universe within Two Characters

I. Why Is "Chun" (Spring) "Chun"$5 Beginning with "Chun" (萅)

Before entering into a detailed discussion of Lichun, we must first gaze carefully at the character "chun" (春, spring) itself. Why was "chun" chosen to name the season in which all things sprout and vitality first stirs$6 What, precisely, is the original meaning of this character$7

The character "chun" as we write it today has already been highly simplified, its strokes merged and blended, making it difficult to discern its original form. To trace its original meaning, we must return to its ancient form—"萅" (chun). This character's structure clearly preserves the full intent of the ancients who created it. It is composed of three parts: the upper portion is "艸" (grass, depicting the form of clustered vegetation), the middle portion is "屯" (tun), and the lower portion is "日" (sun).

None of these three components was arbitrarily assembled. "艸" represents grass and trees—the most direct protagonist of spring, for the sprouting of vegetation is precisely the hallmark of spring. "日" represents the sun—representing yang qi, warmth, and light, for it is precisely because of the sun's yang qi that vegetation is able to sprout. And the most crucial, most philosophically rich component, is the middle character "屯."

The character "屯" is itself an extremely important hexagram name in the Zhouyi (Book of Changes)—the Tun hexagram (䷂, Water over Thunder), whose image is precisely "the difficulty of grass and trees first sprouting and breaking through the soil." The Shuowen Jiezi (Explaining Simple and Analyzing Compound Characters) glosses "屯" thus: "Tun means difficulty. It depicts the initial sprouting of grass and trees, straining with difficulty. It is composed of che (屮, a sprout) piercing through yi (一); yi represents the earth." Xu Shen states it plainly: tun means difficulty; its graphic form resembles the appearance of grass and trees at the moment of first sprouting—a tender shoot (屮) must pierce through the hard ground (the horizontal stroke representing the earth), and how difficult, how strained, this process is.

Thus the complete meaning of the character "萅" becomes suddenly clear: vegetation (艸), spurred on by the sun's yang qi (日), strains with all its strength to pierce through the hard, frozen earth (屯), breaking through the soil to sprout and stir into life for the first time. This is "chun"—spring.

II. Why Does the Original Meaning of "Chun" Conceal the Character for "Difficulty"$8

Here lies a question well worth pondering deeply: why did the ancients place "difficulty" (屯) at the very core of the character "chun"$9 Does spring not impress us as mild, warm, relaxed, and pleasant$10 Why, then, did the ancients who created this character choose to install at its heart a component signifying "hardship"$11

This is precisely evidence of how deep the ancients' observation was, how keen their apprehension. In the romantic imagination of modern people, spring is a scene of ease and blossoming splendor. But in the eyes of the ancients, who truly lived by farming and faced Heaven and Earth day and night, the sprouting of spring was by no means an easy affair—quite the opposite, it was an arduous and strenuous struggle. A single seed must push aside the entire weight of earth pressing down upon it; a tender shoot must break through ice and frozen soil not yet fully melted. The force contained within this process, the struggle it entails, is truly astonishing.

What the ancients saw in spring was not spring already resplendent with blossoms, but spring in the very act of breaking through the soil, sprouting with difficulty. At the time of Lichun, the myriad things have not yet flourished; the ground may still be covered with lingering snow, and the chill still lingers. Yet beneath this seemingly desolate surface, an irrepressible vital force is straining upward beneath the earth, striving to break through. The more this force must overcome obstruction, the more its greatness is revealed. What the character "屯" expresses is precisely this posture of life "rising up amid difficulty."

This resonates entirely with the meaning of the Tun hexagram in the Zhouyi. Tun is the third hexagram among the sixty-four, coming immediately after Qian and Kun—that is to say, once Heaven (Qian) and Earth (Kun) have been established, the first circumstance encountered by the birth of the myriad things is "tun." The "Xugua" ("Sequence of the Hexagrams") commentary states: "Once there are Heaven and Earth, the myriad things are born therein. That which fills the space between Heaven and Earth is nothing but the myriad things; hence it is succeeded by Tun. Tun signifies fullness; tun signifies the first birth of things" (有天地，然后万物生焉。盈天地之间者唯万物，故受之以屯。屯者，盈也，屯者，物之始生也). Tun is both "difficulty" and "fullness," and also "the first birth of things." At the moment things are first born, they are at once full and difficult—this appears contradictory, but is in fact one and the same: precisely because vital force is extremely full, there is strength to break through obstruction; and precisely because obstruction must be broken through, the process appears difficult.

From this we may see that the character "chun," from its very origin, tells us this: the beginning of life has never been an easy or effortless thing. The "generation" (生) that Lichun marks is a "generation" that rises up amid difficulty, a "generation" that breaks through encirclement. This resonates deeply with the Daoist insight that "reversal is the movement of the Dao; weakness is the function of the Dao" (反者道之动，弱者道之用), and with the Confucian spirit that "when Heaven is about to confer a great responsibility upon a person, it must first afflict their mind and will" (天将降大任于斯人也，必先苦其心志).

III. The Philosophy of "Li": Founding, Establishing, and the Foremost of the "Four Beginnings"

Having understood "chun," we must also understand "li" (立). What, precisely, does the "li" of Lichun mean$12

The original meaning of "li" is the form of a person standing upright, facing forward, upon the ground. The Shuowen Jiezi glosses "li" thus: "Li means to stand still. It is composed of da (大, a frontal human figure) standing atop yi (一)." A "da" (a frontal human form) standing atop a "yi" (the ground)—this is "li." From this original meaning, "li" extends to a series of meanings including "to establish," "to found," "to erect," and "to begin." Within the system of solar terms, "li" takes precisely the meaning of "founding" and "establishing"—Lichun, Lixia, Liqiu, and Lidong (the Beginnings of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter) mark, respectively, the "founding" and "commencement" of the four seasons.

Why did the ancients choose "li," a character brimming with a sense of force, to name the commencement of the seasons, rather than a gentler character$13 Here too lies a profound intent. "Li" signifies a kind of establishment from nothingness into being, a kind of standing-erect from the potential into the actual. Spring does not "gradually arrive"—it is "established" at a certain moment; just as a person does not "gradually rise" to standing, but "stands" at a certain instant. The "li" of Lichun proclaims: from this day forward, the season of "spring" is formally established, standing erect and dignified between Heaven and Earth.

Within the system of the "Four Beginnings"—Lichun, Lixia, Liqiu, and Lidong—Lichun occupies a special position: it is the foremost of the four. Lixia, Liqiu, and Lidong each mark, within a single year, the turn from one season to the next; Lichun alone marks the turn from the old year into the new, from the conclusion of "storing" into the commencement of "generating." If Lixia, Liqiu, and Lidong may be described as "changes of season" within the year, then Lichun is the "change of year" between one year and the next. This distinction may appear subtle, but it is of the utmost importance—it determines Lichun's status as the "originating" (元) point within the entire system of solar terms.

Taking "chun" and "li" together, the full meaning of "Lichun" becomes clear: it is the formal establishment of the season in which vegetation, receiving yang qi, breaks through the soil to first sprout; it is the beginning of the year; it is the dignified, upright standing-forth of the force of "origination" between Heaven and Earth. One character, "li," speaks of its "founding"; the other, "chun," speaks of its "sprouting"—beginning and new birth are precisely the two most fundamental qualities of the solar term Lichun.

A further question worth pursuing: why is it that only the "Four Beginnings" are named with "li," while the "Two Equinoxes and Two Solstices" (二分二至) are named with "fen" (分, division) and "zhi" (至, extreme)$14 This difference in naming precisely reveals the ancients' differing understanding of the essential natures of these two categories of solar terms. "Fen" means to divide equally—at the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes, day and night are divided equally, a state of "evenness" and "balance." "Zhi" means extremity, reaching the utmost—at the Summer and Winter Solstices, the sun's shadow reaches its longest or shortest, a state of "extremity" and "culmination." "Fen" and "zhi" both describe a certain "state" of an astronomical phenomenon (equal division, or extremity). "Li," by contrast, is different—it describes not a "state," but an "action," an "act of establishment." The "li" of Lichun does not say that spring exists in some particular state, but that spring is, at this very moment, "established," "founded." The ancients used "fen" and "zhi" to name those astronomical extremes that could be statically measured, and used "li" to name those beginnings of seasons that mark a turning point in the movement of qi, requiring an active "establishment"—this precision in naming reveals the ancients' subtle discernment between "state" and "beginning," between "the extremity of nature" and "the commencement of human affairs."

IV. Why Is "Chun" Often Interconnected with "Chun" (蠢), "Chun" (偆), and "Chun" (惷)$15

In archaic Chinese, "chun" (春) also bears a subtle connection to a group of cognate characters, such as "chun" (蠢, to squirm), "chun" (偆, abundant), and "chun" (惷, foolish/stirring). Though these characters diverged in later usage, they share a core element of meaning—"movement" (动).

The Shuowen Jiezi glosses "蠢" thus: "Chun means the movement of insects." Insects beginning to wriggle—this is the original meaning of "蠢." Our modern expression "chunchun yudong" (蠢蠢欲动, "stirring and eager to move") still preserves this ancient meaning. And the "movement" of insects is precisely one of spring's most important phenological signs—the third of Lichun's Three Pentads (物候), "hibernating insects begin to stir" (蛰虫始振), refers precisely to hibernating creatures beginning to awaken and stir. The connection between "chun" (春) and "chun" (蠢) reveals yet another layer of the ancients' grasp of the essence of spring: spring is "movement"—the movement that awakens from the "stillness," "storage," and "closure" of winter.

Why is "movement" so important that it became the core meaning of characters cognate with "chun"$16 Because in the ancients' cosmology, winter was the season in which Heaven and Earth were "sealed"—yang qi lay hidden deep beneath the earth, all things lay dormant, and the whole of Heaven and Earth seemed to have sunk into a great slumber. Spring, by contrast, is the season in which Heaven and Earth "reopen," resuming "movement." Lichun is precisely the turning point of this transition "from stillness to movement." From this moment, the yang qi beneath the earth begins to rise, frozen rivers begin to thaw, hibernating creatures begin to stir awake, dormant seeds begin to sprout—the whole of Heaven and Earth, from a state of "stillness," re-enters a state of "movement."

This "movement" also finds its counterpart in the Zhouyi. The Tai hexagram, which corresponds to the first month and marks the beginning of spring, has the structure "Qian below, Kun above"—the vigorous Qian surges upward from below, while the yielding Kun receives it from above, and thus yang qi is able to rise and Heaven and Earth are able to communicate. This image of "rising" and "communicating" is precisely an image of "movement." The spring of Lichun, etymologically, is "萅" (breaking through the soil to sprout); through its cognate characters, it is "蠢" (hibernating insects beginning to stir); both together point to the same core reality—life beginning its movement amid difficulty.

V. The Character "Dong" (East) and Spring: The Directional Code of "the Sun within the Wood"

Having understood "chun" and "li," we may gaze once more at another character intimately bound up with Lichun—"dong" (东, east). Lichun belongs to the east; spring is welcomed at the eastern suburbs; "the east wind melts the ice" is the first of the Three Pentads—"east" runs through the entirety of Lichun's imagery. What, then, is the original meaning of the character "dong"$17 Why is it so tightly entangled with spring and with wood$18

Regarding the ancient form of "dong," there has long been a highly illuminating interpretation holding that its graphic form depicts "the sun within the wood"—the sun (日) rising amid the trees (木). The Shuowen Jiezi glosses "dong" thus: "Dong means movement. It is composed of mu (木, wood/tree). Guan Pu says: it is composed of ri (日, sun) within mu." Xu Shen explicitly cites Guan Pu's theory: "composed of ri within mu"—a "sun" embedded within the middle of a "tree," and this is "dong." And remarkably, his gloss of "dong" is likewise the character "movement" (动)—"dong means movement"!

Consider the marvelous convergence of these three elements: "dong" takes its form from "the sun within the wood" (the sun rising amid the forest trees, precisely the image of sunrise in the east), and takes its gloss from "movement" (the sun rises and all things stir into motion). Sun (yang qi), wood (spring's Five Phase), and movement (the motion of generation and growth)—the single character "dong" crystallizes simultaneously the three core elements of Lichun. The sun rising within the wood is precisely the east; the sun rising in the east and all things stirring into motion is precisely the beginning of spring. "Dong" and "chun," from the very depths of their etymological origins, are threaded through by the same imagery of "sunrise, wood's generation, and qi's movement." This is by no means coincidental, but rather the crystallization of the ancients' wisdom in character creation—a wisdom of "taking analogies near at hand from the body, and far afield from things," fusing astronomical phenomena (sunrise), direction (east), season (spring), the Five Phases (wood), and movement (motion) into a single unity. When we speak of "welcoming spring at the eastern suburbs," what we welcome is precisely this qi of the east—"the sun within the wood," gradually rising, generating all things.