Friday, March 29, 2024
LANGUAGE&CULTURE

Lunar Calendar in Spring: today is usu – the first rainfall of the year

lunisolar

Today (Feb 19)  is usu, (pronounced oo-soo) known as ‘the first rainfall of the year’.

usu is the time when the weather should start warming up and melt the snow into rain. It’s the second of the twenty four solar terms in the lunisolar calendar. (The first term is ipchun – the first day of spring.)

According to the Encyclopaedia of Korean Folklore and Traditional Culture the ancient Chinese divided the fifteen days following usu into three five-day periods. During the first five days, otters begin hunting for fish. Over the next five days wild geese fly north. And then over the last five days plants and flowers begin to grow.

Since farming didn’t get underway until the second lunar month, the first lunar month was all about preparing for the coming agricultural year. And there was a lot of time for festivities and ceremonies such as praying to gods or carrying out sacrificial rites and even exorcisms to make sure that the year was a prosperous one without droughts and other natural disasters to harm the crops.

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