solar term · 節氣
Jingzhe 惊蛰 — Awakening of Insects
Jingzhe (惊蛰), or Awakening of Insects, is the third of the twenty-four solar terms — the moment the sun reaches 345° of celestial longitude, and the term whose name says that thunder has startled the dormant creatures out of the ground.
What wakes, what the name used to be, and what turns
The name is two words doing two jobs. 蛰 is the state of lying dormant through the cold — the word covers insects, but also snakes, frogs and anything else that disappears underground for the winter. 惊 is to be startled. Put together they describe a cause and an effect: something has gone off overhead, and what was asleep in the soil is now out. The classical definition below names the cause directly. The ten thousand things come forth through zhen, zhen is thunder, and so the term is called Awakening of Insects.
In 2026 it falls on March 5, 2026, and in 2027 on March 6, 2027. The date is fixed by the sun's position and moves by a day at most between years.
This term has had a different name and a different position. In the earliest arrangement it was 启蛰 — "the opening of dormancy", a statement about the creatures rather than about the thunder — and it stood second, ahead of Rain Water. The name was changed during the Han to avoid the personal name of Emperor Jing, whose given name was 启, and the order of the two terms was swapped in the same era. The older name did not vanish quietly, either: the passage quoted below preserves it, because the text cites the Xia Xiaozheng saying "in the first month, hibernating creatures stir" and then explains what that phrase means. A reader is looking at the older name and the newer one on the same line.
The three pentads move from a plant to a bird to a transformation. Peach trees flower first. Then the oriole calls — and that entry is almost entirely a catalogue of what the bird is called, in four regions and three classics: the yellow bird of the Odes, the millet-striker of Qi, the yellow robe, the golden-robed gentleman of the monks, and four or five more besides. One call, at least eight names, and the pentad spends its whole length reconciling them. Then hawks become cuckoos, which is where the medieval reasoning is most visible: the text explains that the hawk's beak is too soft in mid-spring to hunt, so the bird changes into something that does not need to, and it takes care to distinguish this reversible change from the one-way kind — rotting grass becoming fireflies is not called a transformation, because nothing returns.
Awakening of Insects is one of the twelve sectional terms, and that is its structural job. The Chinese calendar's solar half runs in twelve months, each opened by a sectional term, and this one opens the second: the rabbit month. The consequence for a chart is direct. Two births a day apart across this term sit in different months of the four pillars — in 2026, a birth on March 4 falls in the tiger month and one on March 5 falls in the rabbit month — and the month pillar is one of the four, so the difference is not cosmetic.
The literal claim in the name is worth handling honestly. Dormant animals emerge on soil temperature and day length, not on thunderclaps, and in much of northern China the first thunder of the year comes weeks after this date. The text is not making a meteorological prediction; it is naming a season by its most vivid image, in the same way that a calendar built on the sun's position uses the arrival of swallows to mark a point it has already fixed by measurement.
The customs attached to the term take the waking literally and treat it as something to manage. In Guangdong and Hong Kong this is the day for 打小人 — a rite in which a paper figure standing for a troublesome person is beaten with a shoe, performed at roadside altars and traditionally paired with an offering to the white tiger. Elsewhere the day is marked by eating a pear, on a pun between the fruit and the word for leaving: what wakes with the season should be sent away from the household, not invited in.
What the classical text says
The four passages below are the entry for this term in Collected Explanations of the 72 Pentads — the paragraph defining it, then its three five-day pentads.
The edition is printed in traditional characters, so the term's name appears there as 驚蟄 rather than the 惊蛰 used elsewhere on this page. Both are the same term; only the writing system differs.
驚蟄，二月節。《夏小正》曰：正月啟蟄，言發蟄也。萬物出乎震，震為雷，故曰驚蟄。是蟄蟲驚而出走矣。
Awakening of Insects is the jie of the second month. The Xia Xiaozheng says: "In the first month, hibernating creatures stir" — meaning they emerge from dormancy. The ten thousand things come forth through zhen, and zhen is thunder; hence the name Awakening of Insects. At this time the dormant creatures are startled and go out.
桃始華【《呂氏春秋》作桃李華】。桃，果名，花色紅，是月始開。
Peach trees begin to flower (the Lüshi Chunqiu has "peach and plum trees flower"). The peach is a fruit tree with red blossoms, which begin to open in this month.
倉庚鳴，庚亦作鶊，黃鸝也。詩所謂‘有鳴倉庚’是也。《章龜經》曰：倉，清也；庚，新也；感春陽清新之氣而初出，故名。其名最多，《詩》曰黃鳥，齊人謂之搏黍，又謂之黃袍，僧家謂之金衣公子，其色鵹黑而黃，又名鵹黃。諺曰黃栗畱、黃鶯鶯兒，皆一種也。
The oriole calls. (The second character is also written with the alternative graph for the same sound, "geng.") It is the golden oriole. This is the bird the Shishi refers to when it says "the oriole calls." The Zhanggui Jing says: cang means clear; geng means new; it emerges for the first time in response to the clear, fresh qi of the spring yang, and so it is named accordingly. The bird has very many names. The Shijing calls it the yellow bird; the people of Qi call it boshi (millet-striker); it is also called the yellow robe; Buddhist monks call it the golden-robed gentleman. Its coloring is black and yellow, and it is also called lihuang. Common sayings call it huangliliu and huangyingying'er — all names for the same bird.
鷹化為鳩。鷹，鷙鳥也，鷂鸇之屬。鳩，即今之布穀，《章龜經》曰：仲春之時，林木茂盛，口啄尚柔，不能捕鳥，瞪目忍飢如癡而化，故名曰鳲鳩。《王制》曰鳩化為鷹，秋時也。此言鷹化為鳩，春時也。以生育肅殺氣盛，故鷙鳥感之而變耳。孔氏曰：化者，反歸舊形之謂。故鷹化為鳩，鳩復化為鷹，如田鼠化為鴽，則鴽又化為田鼠。若腐草為螢，鴙為蜃，爵為蛤，皆不言化，是不再復本形者也。
Hawks transform into cuckoos. The hawk is a bird of prey, of the kind that includes the sparrowhawk and the kite. The cuckoo is what is today called the "grain-rain cuckoo" (bugu). The Zhanggui Jing says: in the middle of spring, when the forests are lush, the beak is still soft and cannot catch birds; the bird stares ahead, enduring hunger in a daze, and so transforms — this is why it is called the shijiu. The Wangzhi says that the cuckoo transforms into a hawk, which happens in autumn. Here it says that the hawk transforms into a cuckoo, which happens in spring. Because the energy of growth and nurturing is strong, birds of prey are affected by it and change. Kong says: to "transform" means to return to a former form. Hence the hawk transforms into a cuckoo and the cuckoo transforms back into a hawk, just as the field mouse transforms into a quail and the quail transforms back into a field mouse. But in cases such as rotting grass becoming fireflies, the pheasant becoming a large clam, or the sparrow becoming an oyster, the word "transform" is not used, because these do not return to their original form.
Collected Explanations of the 72 Pentads · 元 吳澄《月令七十二候集解》 · 維基文庫 · text retrieved 2026-07-30
The Chinese is reproduced as printed in that edition, including the modern punctuation its editors added. Interlinear notes in the original are the author's own. The English is our own translation, made for this archive.
Awakening of Insects at fengshuiHQ
In the traditional calendar this term opens the second month, and the rites that grew around it are defensive ones — the white tiger offering and the beating of the paper figure both belong to this day rather than to the season generally. It is one of the few terms with an observance that is still visibly performed in public.
Inside fengshuiHQ this is a term that changes numbers. The month pillar in the four pillars turns here, and the engine that computes charts turns it here — not at the equinox, which many people assume, and not at the start of a calendar month. Separately, the daily almanac at /huangli prints the term's name across the top of the card on the day it begins and on no other day, so the marker a reader sees there is an instant, while the pillar change it coincides with lasts a month.
Related concepts
Before this term comes Yushui (雨水), and after it Chunfen (春分), which falls in the middle of the month this one opens. The year itself began earlier, at Lichun (立春). Pages written so far are listed on the Learn index.
See today's almanac
The almanac names this term on the day it begins, alongside that day's stem and branch.
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