Thursday, February 05, 2009

Day +946 : Egg of LiChun (立春立蛋)

I am fine today.

My wife called from school yesterday noon time, saying that it was particularly easy to make an egg stood up during that particular time because it was LiChun (立春). The teachers in the school were demonstrating this to her.

What is LiChun? Quote from Wikipedia:

The traditional East Asian calendars divide a year into 24 solar terms (節氣). Lìchūn (pīnyīn) or Risshun (rōmaji) (Chinese and Japanese: 立春; Korean: 입춘; Vietnamese: Lập xuân; literally: "start of spring") is the 1st solar term. It begins when the Sun reaches the celestial longitude of 315° and ends when it reaches the longitude of 330°. It more often refers in particular to the day when the Sun is exactly at the celestial longitude of 315°. In the Gregorian calendar, it usually begins around February 4 and ends around February 18 (February 19 East Asia time).
I rushed home from office after receiving the call to balance an egg, but no matter how I hard try, the egg didn’t stand up :-(

I told my wife that I couldn’t make the egg to stand. She said that the right time to balance the egg had passed. Even the teachers in school had difficulty to balance the egg again.

However, my wife asked someone to take the photo to prove that it worked that time.

The photo taken in school
The newspaper also reported this (click to have a larger view)

But according to Wikipedia, balancing an egg is not particulary difficult at any time of the year. And as far as science knows, no physical influence of other celestial bodies on the egg can affect its balance as required by the folk belief.

You can read the article "Egg of Li Chun" here.

I am still trying...

See you next post :-)

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