Grain in Ear
In Chinese: 芒種芒种
The ninth solar term, the Sun at 75° about 6 June: the awned grain is cut and the rice is sown, the busiest days of the farming year, and the Horse month opens.
Meaning
Grain in Ear, Mangzhong, is the ninth of the twenty-four solar terms: the Sun at 75°, about 6 June. Máng is the awn, the bristle of the wheat and the barley; zhòng is the seed and the sowing. The term names the double work of these days: the awned grain is harvested and the rice is sown or planted out, and farmers say that the season is máng, busy, with the same sound. In the old proverb the days are too short for all there is to do: the wheat must be cut before the rains and the rice set out before the great heat.
It is an opening term: it opens the Horse month, the fifth solar month, the heart of summer and of Fire. In the five phases this is the season at its fullest, before the solstice turns the light back.
Its three pentads are the mantis hatching, the shrike beginning to call, and the mockingbird falling silent: the noises of early summer change as the season ripens.
In practice
- In BaZi a birth from this instant belongs to the Horse month and its pillar; a birth within five minutes of it is marked uncertain, since a slightly different time would give the Snake month.
- In Chinese astrology the month animal turns from the Snake to the Horse, and the Cycles lens begins the Horse month’s reading here.
- In Feng Shui the month’s star changes, one less than the Snake month’s.
- The Calendar marks it on its day, with the Sun at 15° Gemini, as the opening of the Horse month.
Across traditions
- In Japan bōshu comes a few days before the plum rains, tsuyu, set in, the season for planting out the rice seedlings; in Korea it is mangjong, in Vietnam mang chủng.
- In Western astrology the Sun is at 15° Gemini, the middle of the last spring sign, a fortnight before the solstice opens Cancer.
- Across the farming world the weeks of early June were those of haymaking and of the first cut in Europe’s fields, as of the wheat harvest in northern China: the busiest days are written into every rural calendar.
Origin and history
The term is in the Huainanzi’s list of twenty-four, in 139 BC, and its mantis, shrike and mockingbird in the old seasonal instructions. Its name, which joins the harvest of one crop and the sowing of the next, is one of the most practical of all, a reminder written into the calendar.
Literature gave it a gentler side. In chapter twenty-seven of Cao Xueqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber, the young women of the Grand View Garden keep the festival of Mangzhong by bidding farewell to the flower spirits, whose season is over; it is on that day that Lin Daiyu gathers the fallen petals and buries them, one of the most famous scenes of Chinese fiction.
How Ulune calculates it
Ulune takes Grain in Ear as the instant the Sun’s apparent longitude reaches 75°, from its table of the solar terms computed with the Swiss Ephemeris for 1800 to 2200. The Horse month and its pillar begin at that instant, whatever the clock or the time zone. In 2026 it fell on 5 June at 15:48 UT.
Correspondences
| Correspondence | Grain in Ear |
|---|---|
| Characters, pinyin | 芒種 mángzhòng |
| The Sun | 75°, 15° Gemini |
| About | 6 June |
| In 2026 | 5 June, 15:48 UT |
| Its place | Opens the Horse month |
| Season | The third term of summer |
| Its three pentads | The mantis hatches; the shrike calls; the mockingbird falls silent |
| Before and after | Grain Buds, Summer Solstice |
| Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese | Bōshu, mangjong, mang chủng |
Related
- Solar termsThe twenty-four points of the Sun’s year, one every 15°, from the Start of Spring to Major Cold: the calendar of the seasons that sets the Chinese months.
- Grain BudsThe eighth solar term, the Sun at 60° about 21 May: the grain swells but is not yet full, in the middle of the Snake month, a lesson in moderation.
- Summer SolsticeThe tenth solar term, the Sun at 90° about 21 June: the longest day, the height of yang in which yin is born, in the middle of the Horse month.
- Solar monthThe month of the solar terms, from one opening term to the next, twelve to a year: the month BaZi, Feng Shui and the animals count by, not the lunar one.
- Equinox and solsticeThe Sun entering Aries or Libra (the equinoxes) or Cancer or Capricorn (the solstices), opening the seasons and the zodiac’s four quarters.
Sources
- Lü Buwei (ed.), Lüshi Chunqiu, “The Twelve Months”, c. 239 BC
- Liu An (ed.), Huainanzi, “Patterns of Heaven” (Tianwen), 139 BC
- Yi Zhou Shu, “The Seasonal Instructions” (Shixun), Han dynasty or earlier
- Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou Meng), 18th century
- UNESCO, The Twenty-Four Solar Terms, Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, 2016