Liqiu, the Start of Autumn, is the thirteenth solar term, at the sun's longitude of 135 degrees, around the eighth of August. It is a sectional (jie) term and marks the astronomical beginning of autumn, though heat often lingers in the spell traditionally called the autumn tiger. In the farming almanac it turns attention toward the ripening and gathering of the main crops. Old customs include the weighing of people to compare with early summer and the eating of hearty foods to recover flesh lost in the heat, sometimes called biting the autumn. Being a solar marker, it falls near the same Gregorian date each year. These are the observances of the East Asian agricultural tradition, resting on the twenty-four-fold division of the tropical year into equal solar arcs anchored to the sun.
Liqiu, the Start of Autumn, falls at 135 degrees, around 7 or 8 August, and is a jie, or sectional, term, opening the third of the traditional calendar's four seasons even though, as with Lixia's start of summer, actual autumn weather in most of China does not arrive until considerably later, since the solar terms divide the year by solar position rather than by observed temperature. Liqiu carries the folk custom of tie qiu bai, literally "pasting on autumn fat," in which people are traditionally encouraged to eat well, particularly meat, to recover condition lost to poor appetite during the preceding summer heat, a custom that presumes summer's heat has already reduced the body's reserves.