solar term · 節氣
Lichun 立春 — Start of Spring
Lichun (立春), or Start of Spring, is the first of the twenty-four solar terms — the moment the sun reaches 315° of celestial longitude, and the point at which the year turns in Chinese astrology.
What Lichun is, and what it decides
Start of Spring opens the cycle of twenty-four solar terms — the framework that divides the solar year into twenty-four segments of roughly fifteen days each. Each term marks the sun's arrival at a fixed point of celestial longitude, which is why the terms track the seasons closely and why their dates move only slightly from year to year. Lichun sits at 315°, and it is where the sequence begins.
In 2026, Lichun falls on February 4, 2026. In 2027, it falls on February 4, 2027. The date drifts by a day at most, because the term is defined by the sun's position rather than by a count of days.
Three things about Lichun are routinely gotten wrong, and each of them changes what a chart says.
First: the astrological year does not begin on January 1. It begins at Lichun. January 1 is a civil convention with no standing in this system — nothing in a chart changes when it passes. Somebody born on January 20 belongs to the year that started at the previous Lichun, roughly eleven months earlier, not to the calendar year printed on their birth certificate.
Second, and this is the one that trips up most calculators: the astrological year does not begin at Chinese New Year either. Chinese New Year is a lunisolar date — it follows the moon, and it can land anywhere from late January to late February. Lichun is a solar date, fixed to the sun's position, and it lands within a day or so of February 4 every year. The two almost never coincide. In most years they are days or weeks apart, and either one can come first.
That gap matters because it is a window in which two systems disagree. Anyone born between Lichun and Chinese New Year — or between Chinese New Year and Lichun, depending on the year's order — is assigned one animal by a calculator that uses the lunar new year and a different animal by one that uses the solar term. This is the single most common source of a wrong zodiac animal, and people usually discover it only when two sites give them two different answers.
Third: this is not a labelling question. The year boundary is an input to the calculation, so moving it moves the result. Your zodiac animal comes from the year pillar, and the year pillar's heavenly stem and earthly branch both change at Lichun. Your Gua number, which drives the Eight Mansions directions in feng shui, is derived from the birth year under the same boundary. Get the boundary wrong and the animal, the pillar, and the directions are all wrong together — not by a little, but by one full position in a twelve-year cycle.
The reason the boundary sits here rather than at the new moon is that the four pillars are a solar system. The month pillars turn at solar terms too — each of the twelve months of the chart begins at one of the twelve "sectional" terms, of which Lichun is the first. Putting the year boundary at a lunar date would leave the year pillar on one calendar and the month pillar on another. Lichun keeps them on the same one.
None of this makes Chinese New Year less real. It is the cultural new year, and it governs the festival, the zodiac decorations, and the year's popular name. It simply is not the boundary a chart is calculated against.
What the classical text says
The passages below are the entry for Lichun in 《月令七十二候集解》 — its definition of the term, followed by the three five-day periods that make it up.
立春，正月節。立，建始也。五行之氣往者過來者續于此。而春木之氣始至，故謂之立也。立夏、秋、冬同。
Start of Spring is the node of the first month. "Start" means to establish a beginning. Here the qi of the five phases — what has passed recedes and what comes next continues. The qi of spring wood first arrives at this point, and so it is called "start." Start of Summer, Autumn, and Winter follow the same principle.
東風解凍。凍結于冬，遇春風而解散；不曰春而曰東者，《呂氏春秋》曰：東方屬木，木，火母也。然氣溫，故解凍。
The east wind thaws the ice. Ice forms in winter and disperses when it meets the spring wind. The reason it says "east" rather than "spring" is given in the Lüshi Chunqiu: the east corresponds to wood, and wood is the mother of fire. Wood's qi is warm, and so the ice thaws.
蟄蟲始振。蟄，藏也；振，動也。密藏之蟲，因氣至，而皆蘇動之矣。鮑氏曰：動而未出，至二月，乃大驚而走也。
Hibernating creatures begin to stir. Hibernate means to hide away; stir means to move. The creatures that have been lying hidden in their burrows are roused to movement as the seasonal qi arrives. Bao says: they move but have not yet emerged; it is not until the second month that they are startled fully awake and come out.
魚陟負冰。陟，升也。魚當盛寒伏水底而遂暖，至正月陽氣至，則上遊而近冰，故曰負。
Fish ascend, bearing the ice. Ascend means to rise. Fish, having lain at the bottom of the water during the height of the cold, gradually feel the warmth; when the yang energy arrives in the first month, they swim up toward the surface and draw close to the ice — hence the term "bearing."
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.
How fengshuiHQ uses Lichun
fengshuiHQ uses Lichun as the year boundary everywhere, without exception. The zodiac animal shown on a birth chart, the year pillar in the four pillars, and the Gua number behind the bedroom audit's directions are all calculated against the solar term, not against January 1 and not against Chinese New Year.
This is a statement about how the calculation runs, not a general observation about the tradition. The engine that computes charts here was modified specifically so that the year turns at Lichun, and there is a standing test that fails the build if that behaviour ever regresses — because a chart calculated on the wrong boundary is wrong in a way the reader cannot see.
The practical consequence: if a chart calculated here disagrees with one from elsewhere about a birthday in late January or early February, the boundary is the first thing to check.
Related concepts
Related concepts: the Chinese zodiac (the twelve earthly branches, read from the year pillar); the twenty-four solar terms (the solar framework Lichun opens); and the Gua number (the Eight Mansions figure derived from the birth year under this same boundary). Pages for these are not written yet.
See today's almanac
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