Autumn in North China, where I live (more on the geography of China in a later post) is generally long and mild. The character for Autumn is 秋 (qiu1) and is made up of the characters for grain 禾 (he2) and fire 火 (huo3).
Contrary to popular conceptions, most Chinese characters are not pictures. Only approximately 10% are derived from pictographs or have a meaning related to their image. Autumn happens to fall into that 10%. Since most of the pictograph derived characters are simple/ natural concepts, it makes some sense that most seasons would fall into that category.
So in my humble interpretation the idea of harvest makes the grain component obvious. As to the fire I guess it either has to do with the burning off of field waste or possibly to warfare. Since in many traditional societies Autumn was the best time for raiding and making war. People were finished farming and now had the time to devote to marauding, pillaging, and burning. And all the now stored grain gave them something to steal.
Today looks like it will be yet another beautiful Fall day and I hope to go out and get some more pictures for you.
These are from our very wet, cold early Autumn, blech!
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This is an entrance to one of the older buildings on our campus. Which is probably one of the most beautiful campuses in China. (An opinion based mostly on my own biases).* * * * *
Here is a (wet and misty) view from my apartment window looking south over the older neighborhood outside of campus and in the distance, barely visible are the towers of the downtown area.* * * * *
Jackie Chan, keeping watch on a pile of junk in the stairway.* * * * *
A view along the city wall north of campus and on the border of Iron Pagoda Park.* * * * *
Another wet view of our campus.
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