Jingzhe 惊蛰 — Awakening of Insects

The term of first thunder, when hibernating animals are said to be roused. Jingzhe falls around 5 March. The traditional description is that spring thunder wakes the insects; the astronomical marker is simply the sun at 345 degrees.

It is a solar term — a date fixed by the sun's position, not by the moon. The term of first thunder, when hibernating animals are said to be roused. The name is a good example of how the terms encode observation rather than belief: the insects wake because the ground warms, and the thunder is a coincident marker rather than a cause.

The term is one of the few whose folklore is still widely observed in the form of the associated custom of driving off pests, and it marks the beginning of the main agricultural season across most of the country. It is grouped under Wood (木) in the five-element system.