Awakening of Insects

Meaning

The Awakening of Insects, Jingzhe, is the third of the twenty-four solar terms: the Sun at 345°, about 6 March. Its two characters mean to startle and the creatures that hide in the earth for winter: the tradition pictured the first spring thunder rolling over the plain and waking the insects, the frogs and the snakes from their sleep.

It is an opening term, a jie: it opens the Rabbit month, the second solar month, in the heart of spring’s rise. The fields are being ploughed in northern China, and the season has turned from waiting to working. Farmers took the first thunder as the sign that the soil was warm enough to open, and the old almanacs set the start of the year’s ploughing in these days.

Its three pentads mark the change: the peach trees begin to blossom; the oriole sings; and the hawk turns into a dove, the old way of saying that the birds of prey of winter give way to the gentler birds of spring.

In practice

• In BaZi a birth from this instant belongs to the Rabbit month and its pillar; a birth within five minutes of it is marked uncertain, since a slightly different time would give the Tiger month.
• In Chinese astrology the month animal turns from the Tiger to the Rabbit, and the Cycles lens begins the Rabbit month’s reading here.
• In Feng Shui the month’s star changes, one less than the Tiger month’s.
• The Calendar marks it on its day, with the Sun at 15° Pisces, as the opening of the Rabbit month.

Across traditions

• In Japan the term keeps its oldest name, keichitsu, written 啓蟄, the opening of the creatures’ winter rest, the very name China changed under the Han.
• In Korea gyeongchip shares an old saying with the term before it: at usu and gyeongchip the ice on the Taedong river breaks; in Vietnam it is kinh trập.
• In Western astrology the Sun is at 15° Pisces, the middle of the last sign of winter, a fortnight before the equinox that opens the Western zodiac.

Origin and history

The waking of the hibernating creatures is one of the oldest signs of the Chinese year. The Xia Xiaozheng, an almanac of the seasons kept in the Da Dai Liji, already says that in the first month the creatures open their winter rest, qǐzhé; the “Twelve Months” of the Lüshi Chunqiu and the Huainanzi carry the sign on.

The name changed because of an emperor. Qǐ, “to open”, was the personal name of Emperor Jing of Han, Liu Qi, and names of rulers were not written; the term became jīngzhé, “to startle”. It also changed places: in the early Han calendars, as Ban Gu’s Hanshu shows, it came before Rain Water, and only later took its present place as the opening of the second month. Japan, which borrowed the terms later, kept the older character.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune takes the Awakening of Insects as the instant the Sun’s apparent longitude reaches 345°, from its table of the solar terms computed with the Swiss Ephemeris for 1800 to 2200. The Rabbit month and its pillar begin at that instant, whatever the clock or the time zone. In 2026 it fell on 5 March at 13:58 UT.

Correspondences