Start of Spring Traditions — Biting the Spring and Welcoming the New Year

Start of Spring (立春, Lìchūn) is the first of the twenty-four solar terms and carries a weight of tradition that matches its position at the head of the calendar. For more than two thousand years, this term has been accompanied by ceremonies, foods, and customs designed to welcome the returning yang energy and align human activity with the earth's slow emergence from winter. Unlike the calendar New Year (which shifts with the lunar cycle), Start of Spring is an astronomical fixed point — the moment when the sun reaches 315° ecliptic longitude — and the traditions surrounding it reflect this deeper connection to the solar year.

Biting the Spring (咬春, Yǎo Chūn)

The most enduring tradition of Start of Spring is "biting the spring," a custom recorded as early as the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) and still practiced across northern China today. On the day of Lìchūn, families gather to eat spring pancakes (春饼, chūn bǐng) — thin, unleavened wrappers filled with an array of fresh vegetables and sometimes slivers of meat. The pancake itself is a symbol of the season's first growth: round like the sun, thin as new leaf, and wrapped around the earliest green vegetables of the year. In the imperial era, the emperor himself would perform a ceremonial version of this meal, distributing spring pancakes to his court as a gesture of abundance for the year ahead.

The fillings are not arbitrary. Each component carries symbolic meaning and seasonal wisdom. Scallions represent clarity and foresight. Garlic chives stimulate the liver meridian — the organ system associated with spring in Chinese medicine. Bean sprouts embody the shoots that are even now pushing through thawing soil. Together, the fillings create a dish that is both a meal and a medicinal intervention: a way of eating that aligns the body with the season before the season has fully announced itself. In many households, the number of fillings is also significant — five, eight, or twelve ingredients, each representing a different wish for the coming year.

“The body, too, benefits from this rhythm: not sudden bursts of exercise after winter's stillness, but gradual, consistent movement that mirrors the earth's own pace. Like the first green shoots, the best way to begin is quietly and without forcing.”

The Welcoming of Spring (迎春, Yíng Chūn)

Before the spring pancake came the ceremony. In imperial China, the Welcoming of Spring (迎春, Yíng Chūn) was one of the most important state rituals of the year. On the day preceding Lìchūn, officials would process to the eastern edge of the city — east being the cardinal direction associated with spring — carrying ceremonial implements and banners painted with images of the Green Dragon, the mythical guardian of the eastern quarter. A figure representing the Mang Shen (芒神), the spirit of agriculture, would be paraded through the streets alongside a clay ox (春牛, chūn niú), symbolizing the plowing that would soon begin.

The ceremony culminated in the "beating of the spring ox" (打春, dǎ chūn), in which officials and then common citizens would strike the clay ox with decorated sticks. This was not an act of violence but a ritual of release: the breaking of winter's grip, the freeing of the soil from frost. People would gather fragments of the broken ox and scatter them in their fields, believing the clay carried the blessing of the season. In some regions, the clay was replaced with a paper-and-bamboo ox filled with grain — when struck, the grain spilled out as a promise of the harvest to come. The custom survived into the twentieth century in rural areas and is still reenacted in cultural festivals today.

Spring Couplets and Door Gods

Although the lunar New Year (Spring Festival, 春节) often falls near or after Start of Spring, many of the traditions associated with the festival are rooted in the solar term that precedes it. The practice of pasting spring couplets (春联, chūn lián) — pairs of poetic lines written on red paper and hung beside doorways — began as a Start of Spring custom before becoming associated with the lunar New Year. The couplets are always written on red paper (the color of yang, good fortune, and fire) and express wishes for prosperity, health, and harmony in the coming agricultural cycle.

Similarly, the tradition of posting door god images (门神, mén shén) on the first day of spring has ancient roots. The gods Zhong Kui (钟馗) and the divine guardians Yuchi Gong and Qin Shubao were believed to protect homes from evil spirits as the world transitioned from the yin of winter to the yang of spring. The threshold was understood to be a liminal space — neither entirely inside nor outside — and during the seasonal transition, it required special protection. This awareness of boundaries and transitions is characteristic of Chinese seasonal thinking: the moment of change is understood to be both vulnerable and powerful, requiring ritual acknowledgment.

The Spring Ox Chart and Agricultural Knowledge

One of the most sophisticated traditions associated with Start of Spring was the annual publication of the Spring Ox Chart (春牛图, chūn niú tú). This was not merely a decoration but a practical almanac in visual form. The chart depicted a colored ox and a figure of Mang Shen, with their positions, colors, and orientations encoding predictions about the coming agricultural year. The color of the ox's hide indicated the dominant element of the year (green for wood, red for fire, yellow for earth, white for metal, black for water). The position of Mang Shen relative to the ox predicted the timing of spring planting — whether the season would come early or late, and whether rains would be abundant or scarce.

These charts were produced by the Imperial Astronomical Bureau and distributed to farmers across the empire. They represent perhaps the most practical synthesis of astronomy and agriculture in any pre-modern culture — a centralized prediction system encoded in an image that even illiterate farmers could read. The tradition declined after the imperial system ended but has seen a revival in recent decades as interest in traditional agricultural knowledge has grown. Today, the Spring Ox Chart is appreciated not as a literal forecasting tool but as a testament to the depth of observation that the twenty-four solar terms represent.

Health and Dietary Customs

Beyond the spring pancake, Start of Spring carries specific dietary and health customs. The principle governing all of them is simple: reduce heavy, warming foods and increase light, fresh ones. Winter's diet of stews, roasted meats, and preserved vegetables has served the body through the cold, but as yang energy rises, the body's needs change. The tradition of eating "five-spice" dishes (五辛盘, wǔ xīn pán) — a plate of five pungent vegetables including scallions, garlic, leeks, and chives — dates to at least the Han Dynasty and is based on the theory that these plants "awaken" the digestive system from winter's slower metabolism.

The association between Lìchūn and the liver in Chinese medicine also produces specific recommendations. The liver is the organ of spring, governing the smooth flow of qi (energy) throughout the body. Just as the earth's energy begins to move upward and outward, so should the body's energy flow freely. Bitter and sour flavors support the liver, while greasy and fried foods create stagnation. The traditional foods of Start of Spring — light, fresh, slightly pungent — are not arbitrary cultural preferences but a coherent dietary system based on centuries of observation about how the human body responds to seasonal change. They are, in effect, a practical expression of the same ecological intelligence that produced the twenty-four solar terms themselves.