Start of Summer

Meaning

The Start of Summer, Lixia, is the seventh of the twenty-four solar terms: the Sun at 45°, about 6 May. As with spring, the Chinese year does not wait for the solstice: summer begins here, halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, when the wheat of the north is heading and the warmth settles in.

It is an opening term: it opens the Snake month, the fourth solar month, the first of the three months of Fire. In the five phases the season turns from Wood to Fire, and from growth to its full flowering.

Its three pentads are small sounds and quick growth: the mole crickets begin to chirp, the earthworms come up, and the snake gourd climbs. The quiet of spring gives way to the noise of summer, and the long days of work in the fields begin at first light.

In practice

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

Across traditions

• In the Celtic year Beltane, on 1 May, also opens summer halfway between equinox and solstice, when cattle were once driven between two fires on their way to the summer pastures; May Day keeps the date across Europe.
• In Japan, Korea and Vietnam the same term is rikka, ipha and lập hạ, the start of summer in all three calendars.
• In Western astrology the Sun is at 15° Taurus, the middle of the second spring sign: Western reckoning still calls it spring, the Chinese year already summer.

Origin and history

The Monthly Ordinances of the Book of Rites, and the “Twelve Months” of the Lüshi Chunqiu before them, describe the ruler going out to the southern suburb on the day of Lixia to welcome the summer, dressed in the red of Fire, as he welcomed the spring in the east in green. The Huainanzi, in 139 BC, sets the day among the twenty-four, and the old seasonal instructions give its pentads. The four starts of the seasons, with the solstices and the equinoxes, are the oldest layer of the terms: these eight points of the year were named and kept by the court long before the other sixteen.

Popular customs grew around it in the lower Yangtze: children are weighed on a hanging steelyard on the day of Lixia, and boiled eggs in little nets are hung round their necks for egg-tapping games. Families mark the start of the warm months with the first produce of early summer.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune takes the Start of Summer as the instant the Sun’s apparent longitude reaches 45°, from its table of the solar terms computed with the Swiss Ephemeris for 1800 to 2200. The Snake month and its pillar begin at that instant, whatever the clock or the time zone. In 2026 it fell on 5 May at 11:48 UT.

Correspondences