Jingzhe, the Awakening of Insects, recorded here by its older name Qizhe, is the third solar term, at the sun's longitude of 345 degrees, around the sixth of March. It is a sectional (jie) term. Its name evokes the first spring thunder, said to rouse the creatures that have slept through winter, and it marks the quickening of life as the ground warms. In the farming almanac it is a busy threshold, the time to begin ploughing and spring planting before the season advances. Regional customs address the waking pests, and the day is tied in folklore to the first thunder of the year. Being a solar marker, it falls near the same Gregorian date annually. These are the observances of the East Asian agricultural tradition, resting on the twenty-four-fold division of the tropical year.
Jingzhe, the Waking of Insects, falls at 345 degrees, around 5 or 6 March, and is a jie, or sectional, term. Its name refers to the traditional belief that the spring's first thunder rouses hibernating insects and small animals from their winter dormancy, and the term is associated in folk custom with the ritual of da xiaoren, striking a paper effigy of a villain or "petty person," performed particularly in southern China and Hong Kong around this date to ward off ill fortune for the coming year, a practice distinct from the term's agricultural signal but commonly observed alongside it. The term's older name, Qizhe, was altered during the Han dynasty to avoid a naming taboo on the personal name of Emperor Jing of Han, an example of how several solar term names were adjusted historically for reasons unrelated to their astronomical or agricultural content.