Guyu is not just a solar term; it is also the alarm clock by which farmers here arrange their farming seasons and agricultural work.

Guyu is a solar term, and there are many things associated with it, such as tea having Mingqian tea and Yuqian tea, among which Yuqian tea is tea picked before Guyu.

In the countryside of Banqiaotou Township in Jixi County, Anhui Province, there is also a farming proverb about Guyu --- Guyu, Guyu, grain seeds go into the water.

What does this mean?

Banqiaotou Township is a farming township, and Jixi has had the saying since ancient times that "the first du has firewood, the second du has rice."

The division of du should have started from the Yuan Dynasty. At that time, a du was equivalent to today's township level. Banqiaotou Township was the seat of the du administration of the second du, which shows that Banqiaotou Township has a long history of farming.

The farming seasons of each place are not entirely the same, and at that time there was no Gregorian calendar. If agricultural work were arranged according to the lunar calendar, it was very likely that the farming season would be delayed because of inaccuracy, so the farmers of the second du developed the skill of setting farming seasons by solar terms.

During Guyu, the temperature slowly rises, and there is more rain.

Farming in paddy fields requires water. For a mountainous township, spring rain is the guarantee of farming, so farmers seize this time to plow and prepare the seedling fields and sow grain seeds.

At that time, most rural areas planted wheat, and the wheat in Jiangnan ripened and was harvested around Xiaoman. It was just right to tidy the wheat fields after harvesting the wheat, and by Mangzhong they could transplant rice seedlings. From the grain seeds going into the water at Guyu to rice transplanting at Mangzhong, that is 45 days of seedling age. The ancients could really be said to have calculated the farming seasons with no oversight at all!

Now fewer people farm, and many young people know nothing at all about solar terms.

Farming proverbs like this are only sometimes still mentioned by the older generation of farmers when chatting.