Pinyin: xià
Astronomy takes the summer solstice in China's ancient books (around June 22nd); Often use long summer (around June 5); Climate statistics show that June, July and August in the solar calendar are midsummer, and the waiting time method is 1934. Zhang Baokun, a scholar in China, combined phenology with agricultural production and put forward another seasonal method. He thinks that the average climate temperature in summer is over 22℃.
In terms of climate, summer is the season with the highest temperature in the local area. Astronomically speaking, in the summer half year, the direct point of the sun is located in the local northern and southern hemispheres. During the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, the direct point of the sun is on the tropic of cancer. Spring, summer, autumn and winter, all the year round, it will be a hot summer in a blink of an eye.
Xia, there are many nicknames. In Er Ya, China's earliest monograph on meaning, summer is called "Zhu Ming", "Chang Ying", "Jiuxia" and "Haotian". "History of Rites and Music" has the sentence "Zhu Ming is prosperous and applicable to all things"; In the preface to Murong by Tao Yuanming in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, there is a sentence that "the sun and the moon move, and nine summers are already summer"; Amin poet Gao Panlong called summer "long summer" in Poems on Leisure Summer. This long summer refers to the early summer, midsummer and late summer in April, May and June of the lunar calendar. The ancients called the hottest dog days in summer "midsummer". It is very hot in midsummer, and people are looking forward to spending it quickly, so it is also called "relieving summer heat" and "relieving summer heat". Among the twenty-four solar terms formulated by Liu An, King of Huainan in Han Dynasty, there are six solar terms in summer: long summer, full summer, awn seed, summer solstice, light summer and great summer. Among them, long summer refers to the southeast, and Victoria refers to long summer. Since then, everything has grown up, hence the name Long Summer. On this day, the sun reached 45 degrees, and the ancients used it as the symbol of long summer.
There are three summers in farming, namely, summer harvest, summer sowing and summer management. "Su Wen Si Qi Qu Zi Spirit" says: "Xia San month, this is called anti-Hugh; Heaven and earth are in harmony and everything is gorgeous. " After the long summer, it is the busy farming season, which is the key period for crops to enter the peak season and sow early rice in large areas. There is a proverb in agriculture: "Three dynasties have long summers and hoes everywhere". At this time, the rainfall, rainfall and wind direction are closely related to the harvest. There are some agricultural proverbs, such as "it rains every three days in the long summer", "it doesn't rain in the long summer, and the plowshares hang high" and "it doesn't rain in the long summer, until the wheat is beaten". Therefore, since ancient times, our ancestors regarded Long Summer as a very important day and established it as a traditional folk festival, called Long Summer Festival. It can be said that summer is the mount of autumn, bearing the changeable situation, the torrential rain and the hot sun, and bearing the growth, maturity and harvest on the spring and autumn journey. ...
Long Summer Festival, since ancient times, there have been many etiquette, customs and eating customs in the palace and among the people. According to "Notes on the Year of the Year", since the pre-Qin Dynasty, emperors of all dynasties have personally led their ministers, officials, princes and doctors to welcome the summer in the southern suburbs, and held grand ceremonies for Emperor Yan and Zhu Rong (the legendary ancestor of crops and Vulcan). At that time, in order to express the desire for bumper harvests, the monarch and his subjects will wear red ceremonial clothes and jade ornaments and go to sacrifice in a red carriage.
"Isn't there a nine-fold mansion? The curtains of Guangsha hang in Hunan. Ice trays and poles stir up cold light. Zhan Zhuan (turning around) is bitter and hot, and his heart is next to Li Qian. " The poem "Emperor Qinglong" vividly describes the summer vacation in and out of Beijing Palace hundreds of years ago and some folk customs. So in the era when there are no modern appliances such as air conditioners, electric fans and refrigerators, how do people spend the hot summer to resist the heat? What folk customs are there after summer?
Hanging bamboo curtains and sticking cool cloth in the arbor is a folk custom in old Beijing after summer. The poem "Jing Guan Za Yong" and "Du Men Za Yong" said: "The shade of Huaiyin courtyard is empty, and the official is slightly the same. Expose cold cloth, and build a arbor around the high house. " This poem is about the folk customs in the Forbidden City, Mansion Gate, Siheyuan and buildings in old Beijing.
In old Beijing, palaces and houses in palaces and mansions are wide and tall, and there are wide corridors or protruding eaves in front of doors and windows of houses. At that time, the building regulations were "five steps on the eaves and three or five steps on the rafters; The column is one foot high and three feet out of the eaves, plus one. " This kind of building uses the perspective of the sun shadow in winter and summer to make the room warm in winter and cool in summer. In summer, Xiang curtains and bamboo curtains are hung on the doors of palaces, mansions and quadrangles, and windows are removed or sticks are attached. The window of an art academy is made of sparse gauze, commonly known as cool cloth, which is attached to the window frame and rolled up with paper and sticks. These customs are for ventilation and can prevent mosquitoes and flies. In palaces, mansions and quadrangles, from April of the lunar calendar, palaces and courtyards should be covered with awnings made of cloth or reed mats. These awnings are covered by professional awnings and are usually removed after summer. This arbor can not only block the sun's exposure to the courtyard, but also provide a place for family members to enjoy the cool in the courtyard and a place for children to play in summer.
In addition, more than two thousand years ago, the Zhou Dynasty had a method of storing water to resist the heat.
There is a record in Zhou Li Tiangong: "A sword is like a bottle, with a big mouth full of water, so you can avoid the epidemic when eating it". In Ceng Houyi Mausoleum, Hubei Province, among the bronzes excavated by archaeologists, there is a square jar with sandwich ice wine. After the Tang and Song Dynasties, the emperor also had the custom of holding a cold banquet and sending ice cubes to ministers. Amin Dong Liu's "A Brief View of the Jingshi" recorded that "ice was sent to the minister of civil and military affairs in midsummer". In the Annals of Yanjing in the Qing Dynasty, it was also recorded that "from the summer of the capital to beginning of autumn Day, the government gave ice tickets, which were presented by the Ministry of Industry and collected by themselves, with different amounts and different arithmetic".
The ice used in ancient times is natural ice, so we should hide it first. Since ancient times, all dynasties have built "Lingyin"-ice storage wells and ice storage warehouses. The Book of Songs records that "the second day, the ice rush, the third day, the spirit is hidden." The second and third days are equivalent to the December of the lunar calendar, and there is the sound of cutting ice. The ice in the first month is stored in the freezer. According to "Yuanhe County Records", "In ancient times, there was a big ice bank outside Gusu Gate, which contained twenty-four pits according to twenty-four solar terms. Every time it is cold, the water is stored in the ground, and the ice is hard and stored in the cellar. In midsummer, it is necessary to protect the fish and wash the heat. "
In old Beijing in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were snow pools to store ice in Shichahai and other places, and there were officials in charge of ice affairs in the palace, called "Ling Ren", who were in charge of cutting, storing and using ice. Ice houses in Qing Dynasty were divided into official pits, official pits ('own ice houses') and folk pits. In the early years of the Republic of China, some official ice banks were also run by businessmen. Since then, natural ice has been supplied to private quadrangles, hospitals, restaurants and cold drinks shops.
Resist high temperature. At the same time, cold drinks appeared in the market.
Cold drink, called ice food in ancient times, originated in Shang Dynasty about 3000 years ago. At the end of the spring and autumn period, the use of ice has become more extensive, and princes like to drink iced rice wine at banquets. There is a description of appreciating iced glutinous rice wine in Chuci, which tastes mellow and cool. It can be seen that cold drinks were very popular at that time and the production level was also very high. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, there were more and more varieties of "ice food", such as Mei Huajiu soaked in snow, litchi paste in cold water, iced with pearl juice, iced with lotus root silk mixed with snow water and so on. In the Song Dynasty, ice food was more abundant. According to ancient records, Hui Zong, the Emperor of the Song Dynasty, was greedy for ice food in hot summer, which hurt his spleen and stomach. In the Yuan Dynasty, there were delicious frozen foods such as ice cream in the court. According to legend, Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, loved western food and ate ice cream for every meal.
During the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, there were many cold food shops in the old Beijing market, and cheap summer frozen foods such as ice cream, shaved ice, sour plum soup and soda were sold to the public. "In the summer of Kyoto, there must be four kinds of frozen fruits in the banquet. Eat cold, cool and refreshing. " According to Yanjing Year, "the four best iced foods at that time were sour plum soup, watermelon juice, almond tofu and assorted dishes, all of which were iced."
In old Beijing, Shichahai Lotus Market is the largest ice food market, and the assorted ice trays of Huixiantang Restaurant in Shichahai are very famous in Beijing. "The imperial city stopped at noon in June, and the city people were sweating like a pig. Selling ice comes from water, and pedestrians don't eat their hearts. " The poet Yang Wanli's poem is praising the scene of using ice in summer.
As early as in the long summer, on this day, we hung scales under outdoor trees to weigh children and old people to see whether they were strong or thin in the past year, which is also commonly known as "checking fertility for one year". Women, on the other hand, hang scales on the roof beams and call them "fat and thin", teasing each other like playing in a boudoir. There is a poem in Cai Yun's "Wu Beibei": "The wind opens the embroidered pavilion to raise Luo clothes, not to play. In order to hang the quantity, use the official scale to evaluate the thinness and fattening. "
According to legend, the custom of swearing originated in the Three Kingdoms period. It is said that after Liu Bei's death, Zhuge Liang gave Liu Bei's son Adou to Zhao Zilong and sent him to Jiangdong. Please take good care of Adou's stepmother Sun Shangxiang. It was a summer day. Sun Shangxiang used weighing scale to weigh Adou in front of Zhao Zilong, and said it again next summer to see how much weight he had gained. This law of "calling people" was later introduced to the people and became the custom of "calling people" in the long summer.
Beating eggs and rope in summer are two customs of children in summer.
Every family cooks some eggs, duck eggs or goose eggs every summer, soaks them in cold water, puts them on woven silk bags and hangs them around the children's necks. The children nearby get together in small groups to play egg-beating games. Eggs have two ends, the pointed one is the head and the round one is the tail. When you beat eggs, the head of the egg hits the head of the egg and the tail of the egg hits the tail of the egg. One by one, the loser gave up and finally separated the high and low. He who doesn't break the head of an egg is the first, called the king, and he who doesn't break the tail of an egg is the second, called the second king or Xiao Wang. This kind of competition is called beating eggs. In addition, according to legend, the god of plague slept until he woke up in the long summer, and when he woke up, he spread the plague, and children suffered the most. When Nu Wa heard about it, she argued with the god of plague, but the god of plague was helpless and promised that anyone who hung a child's chest in summer would not be hurt. This is the origin of children hanging eggs.
Chinese medicine refers to the symptoms of fatigue, weakness of limbs and loss of appetite in summer. In the old summer, five-color silk thread was tied to children's wrists and other places, saying that it could eliminate disasters and pray for the prevention of summer sickness. This kind of silk thread is called "summer rope" and "longevity thread".
Like many other festivals, long summer used to have many eating customs, such as drinking "long summer porridge", eating "long summer rice", "long summer dog" and "long summer egg", drinking "long summer tea" and trying new things in the long summer.
On the day of long summer, rural areas in old Beijing will drink long summer porridge. Is in front of the stage of the temple fair in the village, or in the open space of the forest grassland, dig a hole and sit in the pot and light a stove. The elders in the village went door to door to get all kinds of rice and beans, cooked porridge with those hundreds of Mi Dou, and then the whole village took bowls and chopsticks to ask for a bowl of long summer porridge. At the same time, the men and women in the village performed the "Shehuo" program. At that time, they drank porridge, sang and danced, and their laughter was very lively. Drinking long summer porridge together is not only a symbol of family harmony in the village, but also to ensure the safety of young and old in summer.
In the old days, there was a jingle saying: "A bowl of long summer porridge will never worry; When you enter the stomach, you will have all the internal organs, and all the diseases will be gone in a hundred years. "This kind of porridge is indeed a safe, timely and healthy custom. People all over the world regard "porridge" as a good health product. In ancient times, there was a saying that "poor people eat porridge, poor people eat porridge in famine years and eat porridge for health".
Eating porridge is the best nourishing nutrition for the human body after spring ploughing and farming. Folk uses five-color rice cooked with red beans, soybeans, black beans, green beans and mung beans mixed with white japonica rice or glutinous rice, or broad bean rice cooked with broad beans, bacon, bamboo shoots and glutinous rice, which is commonly known as "long summer rice" and "long summer dog" steamed with glutinous rice flour. It is said that children are as strong as dogs after eating, and may not get summer disease.
After summer, people can taste new ones with some precocious fruits and vegetables.
In the long summer, people have the saying of "tasting three delicacies", that is, broad bean, amaranth and cucumber, cherry, loquat and apricot, sea silk, puffer fish and yellow croaker. There are also customs such as "eating plums in long summer can make the color beautiful" and eating mulberry cherries in long summer.
In April and May after the summer of old Beijing, many suburban farmers will pick and sell early-maturing vegetables such as garlic seedlings, cucumbers, Toona sinensis, peas, broad beans and leeks in hutongs. There are also those who sell fruits and seafood such as "Xinger Fruit Honey Yo", "Red Cherry Come to Sang Zi Yo", "Jiangmi Lotus Root" and "Pseudosciaena crocea Yo". Housewives and children heard the shouts from quadrangles and went out to buy them one after another, all in order to try new things.
Mulberries and cherries in Beijing were once regarded as royal tributes in the Qing Dynasty. Mulberry is produced in Daxing County, which is located on the Yongding River. Due to the superior planting conditions such as soil quality, the output of black, white and red mulberries was very high in the old days. Cherry is produced in Yingtaogou Village, Mentougou, with a planting history of more than 300 years, and still has an area of 1000 mu. Mulberry tastes sweet and cherry is sweet and sour. It used to be a nutritious fruit for the court and the people.
After the summer, Beijing's heat is increasing day by day, and it is also a time for a bright future. During the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, the royal family went to Xishan Imperial Garden for the summer, and literati also loved to enjoy the cool in the ancient temple. For example, Ji Xiaolan and Cao Xueqin both went to the reclining Buddha Temple in Shichahai for the summer. Some celebrities, students and ordinary people also went to Miao Feng to worship Buddha and burn incense in Niangniang Temple, Xueyuan Temple and Tanzhe Temple, enjoy peony, peony and peony flowers, and have tea. Others like to enjoy the cool and relax in the suburbs, such as Jiao Ling Pit, Vineyard, Erzha, Gaoliang River and Shichahai Jishuitan, enjoying lotus flowers and playing in water to cool off the heat, which has become a unique folk scenery in old Beijing.
After the Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of May, it is the solstice festival in summer. Like the solstice in winter, the solstice in summer has been passed down since ancient times, and there are many folk customs in midsummer.
Xia Jiujiu's songs were first seen in Lu Yong's Wu Jiazhi in the Song Dynasty, and were also selected in Du Fu's Ancient Ballad Slander in the Qing Dynasty. In other words, from the summer of solstice, "from September 19 to 29, fans will not leave their hands;" 3927, ice water is sweet; 4936, strive to stay in the street; In 5945, the treetops danced lightly; 6954, enjoy the cool and not enter the temple; 7963, sleeping at night looking for sheets; 8972, looking for a quilt in the middle of the night; 998 1, everyone is looking for cotton-padded clothes. "
"Taste millet in summer and eat zongzi in Dragon Boat Festival" is a dietary custom in midsummer. In ancient times, when millet and other crops appeared, Emperor Tiandi held a ceremony to taste millet from summer to day of the Zhou Dynasty. The ancients had the activity of eating millet and chicken to worship their ancestors. People make millet buns into horns to worship their ancestors and then taste them. In addition, there is a folk proverb in old Beijing, "On the solstice of winter, there are noodles in jiaozi". On the solstice of summer, most people eat handmade noodles or Lamian Noodles, then wash them with cold boiled water and mix them with sesame sauce or meat sauce, shredded cucumber, shredded radish and green garlic. In the Tang Dynasty, Du Fu liked to eat cold water, wash his face with Sophora japonica leaves, and "the lush Sophora japonica leaves were collected for chefs in China." The new noodles are close to the market, and the juice is mixed with me. People are overheated and want to eat more. It can be seen that making simple and nutritious noodles has been a favorite summer food since ancient times.