When the sun is at its southernmost point in the Northern Hemisphere, Winter Solstice, the 22nd solar term that begins this year on December 21 and ends on January 4, announces its arrival. The shortest day and the longest night falls on December 21 this year. At this solar term, the most frigid temperatures frequent the Earth.

Chinese people attach great importance to this solar term, as they say, “Winter Solstice is as significant as the Spring Festival (冬至大如年).” 

The ancient Chinese used to offer sacrifices to ancestors and hold feasts out of the reverence for the nature. Such rituals now are barely held in modern China, but people still have a variety of festive delicacies that date back to centuries ago. 

The northerners keep alive the tradition of eating dumplings, while the southerners prefer food made of glutinous rice. The round shape can be found in almost all of these dishes, implying the ancient astrology belief that the sun would rejuvenate itself after Winter Solstice.  

Read by Pan Huirun & Zou Minghao

BGM by Asher Fulero

At the Solstice

Shaun O'Brien

We say Next time we’ll go away,

But then the winter happens, like a secret

We’ve to keep yet never understand

As daylight turns to cinema once more:

A lustrous darkness deep in ice-age cold,

And the print in need of restoration

Starting to consume itself

With snowfall where no snow is falling now.

Or could it be a cloud of sparrows, dancing

In the bare hedge that this gale of light

Is seeking to uproot? Let it be sparrows, then,

Still dancing in the blazing hedge,

Their tender fury and their fall,

Because it snows, because it burns.