The Winter Solstice
Today is the winter solstice 1 , the shortest day of the year. In the traditional Chinese calendar this day is known as dongzhi, and is the most important winter festival.
The Nine by Nine Chart for Whiling Away Winter
The winter solstice marks the first day from which the eighty one days of winter are counted 2 . Even with kang beds, winters up north have never been a barrel of laughs. To mark off the days on a chart must have been a comfort, and today the custom of drawing the Nine by Nine Chart 3 for Whiling Away Winter (or Dispel Winter Diagram) still lingers on.
At its simplest it is eighty one circles or squares painted on paper, with one shape being marked off per day, starting on dongzhi. These charts became inventively ornate, with nine characters each with nine strokes used to mark off the days, or ink paintings of eighty one plum blossoms – first the buds are drawn, and one blossom is painted in for each day that passes. When the painting is finished, it is the day to celebrate the arrival of spring.
In Yunnan province, food made from sticky rice is eaten, such as sweet dumplings (tangyuan), 4 sticky rice cake (ciba) 5 , and eight treasures rice (babaofan) 6 , all of which are rich and sweet giving the body energy to defend itself against the winter cold.
In the north of China they traditionally eat jiaozi, and there is a folk tale the upshot of which is that jiaozi look like ears, so if they eat jiaozi their ears will be protected from freezing off in the howling winter cold.
Picture source: netor.com
- Winter solstice / dongzhi 冬至节 dong1 zhi4 jie2Up until the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty (about 200BC), this was the day that marked the beginning of the new year, the equivalent of today’s Spring Festival. In the Tang and Song dynasty, it was a day to make sacrifices to ancestors and Heaven, and even today people go to tend relatives graves in a similar way to Qingming Festival.
- There is a rhyme describing this that is popular across China: the eighty one days of winter (九九八十一天 jiu jiu ba shi yi tian Which is an abbreviated way of saying “nine [multiplied by] nine [makes the] eighty one days [of winter]”). It describes the changes for each group of nine days – from the arrival of freezing ice to the returning wild geese announcing the arrival of spring. As China’s vast size leads to dramatic variations in climate, so the regional variations of this rhyme reflect the different temperatures; when it is so cold that dogs freeze to death in northern Jilin (三九四九冻死狗), in southerly Jiangsu the impoverished still scavenge the streets (三九四九拾粪老汉满街游). Here is the original Chinese: 九九歌 / 一九二九不出手 / 三九四九冰上走 / 五九六九隔河看柳 / 七九河开八九雁来； / 九九加一九，耕牛遍地走。
- The Nine by Nine Chart for Whiling Away Winter 九九消寒图 jiu3 jiu3 xiao1 han2 tu2 Plum blossoms [梅花] are used because they bloom on the coldest days of winter.
- Sweet dumplings 汤圆 tang1 yuan2 Dongzhi winter solstice is considered to be the heralding of the new year, and as with Spring Festival, sweet dumplings are eaten because the name in Chinese, tangyuan, includes the character 圆yuan meaning reunion (团圆 tuan2 yuan2), signifying family reunion.
- Sticky rice cake 糍粑 ci2 ba1 In Dali, Yunnan province, the word dongzhi is not used, instead people call this date 糍粑节, the sticky rice cake festival.
-
Eight treasures rice 八宝饭 ba1 bao3 fan4 The eight treasures can vary, but usually include: Chinese dates (大枣 da4 zao3) , peanuts (花生hua1 sheng1), lotus seeds (莲子lian2 zi3), seed of the Chinese honey locust tree (Gleditsia sinensis, careful, this one seems to be mildly toxic, used in Chinese medicine… 皂角米zao4 jiao3 mi3), lily bulbs (百合bai3 he2), preserved fruits (蜜饯 mi4 jian4 – in Kunming, they use red and green coloured candied white gourd “winter melon” 冬瓜蜜饯dong1 gua1 mi4 jian4, which is also pretty Christmassy).
