A milder mentality
By Zhang Lei | China Daily | Updated: 2022-08-23 08:04
During this period of time, observers of the Big Dipper in the night sky will find that its curved "handle" still points to the southwest. Although the temperature drops in the morning and evening, and there is already a strong sense of autumn, it is still inevitable that there will be occasional higher temperatures during the day, something people often call "autumn tigers".
As the saying goes, "one autumn rain leads to one colder day", every time a rain falls, the temperature will most likely drop; in addition, with the passage of the seasons, the time the northern hemisphere is exposed to the sun gradually decreases, the days get shorter, and the nights get darker and longer. Compared with liqiu, or Start of Autumn, chushu is a minor term that takes on the seasonal change from a more subtle perspective.
The first micro season of chushu is "the birds sacrifice to the eagle". In ancient times, some had the romantic misunderstanding that eagles, during the season, capture their prey and line them up on the ground, as if paying tribute to those who sacrificed their lives for them to survive. In the food chain, eagles hunt birds to survive, but the "sacrifice" provided personification for the ancients of animals seemingly in awe of nature's gift.