Lixia, the Start of Summer, is the seventh solar term, at the sun's longitude of 45 degrees, around the sixth of May. It is a sectional (jie) term and marks the astronomical beginning of summer, when warmth becomes settled and crops enter a phase of rapid growth. In the farming almanac it is a time to tend the fast-growing fields and to guard against early pests and drought. Old customs include the weighing of people to track health through the hot months and the eating of particular seasonal foods to mark the day. Being a solar marker that follows the sun, it falls near the same Gregorian date each year. These are the observances of the East Asian agricultural tradition, resting on the division of the tropical year into twenty-four solar terms of fifteen degrees each.
Lixia, the Start of Summer, falls at 45 degrees, around 5 or 6 May, and is a jie, or sectional, term, opening the second of the traditional calendar's four seasons in the twenty-four-term system. As with Lichun's start of spring, Lixia's astronomical date does not correspond to when temperatures in most of China actually begin to feel like summer, since the solar terms divide the year by the sun's position rather than by observed climate, and the term functioned historically chiefly as an agricultural marker, signalling that rice transplanting and other summer-crop work should be underway. Traditional custom in some regions includes weighing children on this day, a practice associated with wishes for their health through the coming hot season.