Minor Cold

Meaning

Minor Cold, Xiaohan, is the twenty-third of the twenty-four solar terms: the Sun at 285°, about 6 January. Its name says “lesser cold”, but in much of northern China these are the coldest days of the year, colder than those of Major Cold that follow: the ground has given up the last of its stored warmth, while the days are only just lengthening.

It is an opening term: it opens the Ox month, the twelfth solar month and the last of the solar year, which still belongs to the year that the last Lichun opened. A birth in early January, before Lichun, takes the year pillar and the year animal of the year before, however new the calendar on the wall.

Its three pentads already look to spring: the wild geese turn their heads north, the magpies begin to build their nests, and the pheasants begin to call.

In practice

• In BaZi a birth from this instant belongs to the Ox month and its pillar; a birth within five minutes of it is marked uncertain, since a slightly different time would give the Rat month. The year pillar stays the old year’s until Lichun.
• In Chinese astrology the month animal turns from the Rat to the Ox, and the Cycles lens reads the Ox month as the last of the year it opened at Lichun.
• In Feng Shui the month’s star changes, one less than the Rat month’s; the year’s stars stay until Lichun.
• The Calendar marks it on its day, with the Sun at 15° Capricorn, as the opening of the Ox month.

Across traditions

• In Japan shōkan is kan no iri, “entering the cold”, the start of the thirty days of kan, the season of winter cards and of training in the cold; in Vietnam it is tiểu hàn.
• In Korea a joking saying has Major Cold go to visit Minor Cold and come home frozen, so cold is sohan; daehan follows.
• In Western astrology the Sun is at 15° Capricorn, the middle of the first winter sign, a fortnight after the solstice.

Origin and history

The Monthly Ordinances of the Book of Rites give the twelfth month its signs, the geese, the magpies and the pheasants, and the ruler’s orders to cut ice and store it for the summer; the Huainanzi, in 139 BC, sets the term among the twenty-four.

From Minor Cold to Grain Rain the old calendars count the twenty-four flower-message winds, one for each pentad of eight terms, each bringing its flower: the plum, the camellia and the narcissus for Minor Cold, and so on to the peony and the chinaberry blossom of Grain Rain, at the end of spring. The Laba porridge of the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, made of grains, beans and dried fruit, often falls in these days, the first sign that the New Year is coming.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune takes Minor Cold as the instant the Sun’s apparent longitude reaches 285°, from its table of the solar terms computed with the Swiss Ephemeris for 1800 to 2200. The Ox month and its pillar begin at that instant, whatever the clock or the time zone, and the month belongs to the solar year that Lichun opened. In 2026 it fell on 5 January at 08:23 UT.

Correspondences