Qǐzhé

Jingzhe, the Awakening of Insects, recorded here by its older name Qizhe, is the third solar term, at the sun's longitude of 345 degrees, around the sixth of March. It is a sectional (jie) term. Its name evokes the first spring thunder, said to rouse the creatures that have slept through winter, and it marks the quickening of life as the ground warms. In the farming almanac it is a busy threshold, the time to begin ploughing and spring planting before the season advances. Regional customs address the waking pests, and the day is tied in folklore to the first thunder of the year. Being a solar marker, it falls near the same Gregorian date annually. These are the observances of the East Asian agricultural tradition, resting on the twenty-four-fold division of the tropical year.

Jingzhe, the Waking of Insects, falls at 345 degrees, around 5 or 6 March, and is a jie, or sectional, term. Its name refers to the traditional belief that the spring's first thunder rouses hibernating insects and small animals from their winter dormancy, and the term is associated in folk custom with the ritual of da xiaoren, striking a paper effigy of a villain or "petty person," performed particularly in southern China and Hong Kong around this date to ward off ill fortune for the coming year, a practice distinct from the term's agricultural signal but commonly observed alongside it. The term's older name, Qizhe, was altered during the Han dynasty to avoid a naming taboo on the personal name of Emperor Jing of Han, an example of how several solar term names were adjusted historically for reasons unrelated to their astronomical or agricultural content.

The twenty-four solar terms divide the ecliptic into equal arcs of fifteen degrees, and this one falls at 345 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.

This term is met under two names, and the reason is a naming taboo. It was originally Qizhe, the opening of the hibernating creatures, and was renamed Jingzhe, their startling awake, to avoid the personal name of Emperor Jing of the Han, whose given name was Qi. The later form is the one in general use today, and both refer to the same point at 345 degrees. The atlas records the older name with the later one noted, since a reader will meet either.