Xiaoshu, Minor Heat, is the eleventh solar term, at the sun's longitude of 105 degrees, around the seventh of July. It is a sectional (jie) term. Its name signals the arrival of hot weather that is strong but not yet at its fiercest, the approach of the peak of summer. In the farming almanac it is a time of intensive care for the crops as heat and humidity climb, with attention to irrigation and to the threat of storms and flooding. It falls around the start of the traditional hottest period known as the dog days. Being a solar marker, it comes near the same Gregorian date each year. These are the observances of the East Asian agricultural tradition, resting on the twenty-four-fold division of the tropical year into equal solar arcs.
Xiaoshu, Minor Heat, falls at 105 degrees, around 7 July, and is a jie, or sectional, term, the first of the pair of heat-themed terms, alongside the following Dashu, that mark the hottest stretch of the traditional Chinese year. As its name signals, Xiaoshu is read as the beginning of the year's heat rather than its peak, which traditional reckoning places at Dashu roughly two weeks later, though in many parts of China, particularly the south, the very hottest days by direct temperature measurement in fact fall somewhat later still, during the extended hot period folk custom calls sanfu, the "three fu" periods calculated from a separate traditional formula rather than from the solar term boundaries themselves.