立秋：秋日高温猛如虎！
Start of Autumn is the 13th of the 24 solar terms. It marks the end of summer and the start of autumn. Even though autumn begins, the temperature stays high. The hot period after Start of Autumn, usually lasting 30 days, is called “Autumn Tiger”. It can be hotter than Major Heat because of less rain.
On the first day of Start of Autumn, people weigh themselves and compare their weight to what it was at the Start of Summer. If someone has lost weight over the summer, they should eat a lot of delicious food, especially meat, to gain weight.
In Hangzhou, people eat peaches on Start of Autumn. They keep the peach stones until New Year’s Eve, then burn them to ashes in the stove. They believe this prevents plagues (瘟疫) for the whole year. In Taiwan province, it’s the harvest time for longan. People believe eating longan will help their children become important officials. In Shandong province, people make dumplings during Start of Autumn, calling it “Eating the Autumn”. Families eat dumplings together after Start of Autumn day.
Starting from the Tang Dynasty and the Song Dynasty, people in Yiwu, Zhejiang province, have eaten red beans on Start of Autumn day. They swallow (吞下) 7 to 14 little beans with well water, facing west to avoid dysentery (痢疾) in autumn. During the Qing Dynasty, people put gourds outside for a day before Start of Autumn, then ate them on Start of Autumn day to beat the summer heat. Today, people in Tianjin still do this, believing that eating melons like towel gourd, white gourd, and bitter gourd can prevent diarrhea (腹泻).
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