Yushui 雨水 — Rain Water

The term at which precipitation replaces snow and the agricultural year begins in earnest. Yushui falls around 19 February. Its name describes the change in the form of precipitation rather than an amount: what fell as snow now falls as rain, and the ground begins to open.

It is a solar term — a date fixed by the sun's position, not by the moon. The term at which precipitation replaces snow and the agricultural year begins in earnest. The twenty-four terms are best understood as a farming almanac that happens to have been adopted by the calendrical arts — the majority of the names describe weather or crops, not cosmology.

The farming calendar treats this term as the start of preparation. The classical almanacs attach specific agricultural tasks to each of the twenty-four terms, and this is the first one that concerns the soil directly. It is grouped under Water (水) in the five-element system.