Mángzhòng

Mangzhong, Grain in Ear, is the ninth solar term, at the sun's longitude of 75 degrees, around the sixth of June. It is a sectional (jie) term. Its name refers to bearded grains such as wheat and barley ripening for harvest while rice seedlings must be transplanted, making it one of the busiest points of the farming year, a term whose name is sometimes read as busy planting. In the almanac it is the race to reap the ripe crop and sow the next before the deep heat and rains. Being a solar marker, it falls near the same Gregorian date each year. These are the observances of the East Asian agricultural tradition, resting on the division of the tropical year into twenty-four equal solar arcs anchored to the sun's position.

Mangzhong, Grain in Ear, falls at 75 degrees, around 6 June, and is a jie, or sectional, term. Its name combines mang, the bearded awn of ripening grain such as wheat or barley, with zhong, seed or sowing, together marking the point in the traditional agricultural calendar when bearded grain is ready for harvest at the same time that other crops, notably late rice in much of China, are being sown, a busy overlap the term's name is meant to capture directly. The term sits at the midpoint of the six solar terms traditionally assigned to summer, following Lixia and Xiaoman and preceding Xiazhi, the summer solstice, three terms later.

The twenty-four solar terms divide the ecliptic into equal arcs of fifteen degrees, and this one falls at 75 degrees of the sun's apparent longitude. It is a sectional term, a jie, one of the twelve that fall in the odd positions of the twenty-four and open the twelve solar months. The sectional terms and the major terms alternate strictly around the year, so a jie is always followed by a zhong fifteen degrees later.

The system travelled with the Chinese calendar. Japan, Korea and Vietnam all adopted the twenty-four terms and kept their own readings of the same names, and the terms remain in use in each. In 2016 the twenty-four solar terms were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, on the ground that they remain a living framework for agricultural and everyday practice rather than an obsolete scheme.

Mangzhong names the awned grain, the bearded cereals, and marks the point at which they are ready to be harvested and the rice to be transplanted. It is among the most agriculturally specific of the twenty-four names, and it illustrates the limit of the system as well as its use: the terms were fixed against the climate of northern China, so their agricultural instructions were never uniformly applicable across the whole of the country, let alone the countries that later adopted them.