Spring Equinox

Today, March 21th, is the Vernal Equinox, the day on which, anywhere you are on earth, day and night have the same duration.

It is also the first day of the Spring (or Vernal) Equinox (in Mandarin, chūnfēn) solar term.

春分

 

Not much to say about this solar term's name, really... Pretty matter-of-fact. Interesting that the charcter for equinox is the same that is used for minute (the 60th part of an hour), and for the 100th part of a yuan, the currency unit. These are all ideas associated with division, so maybe "divided part" is the core meaning of this character. It works well as a pictogram - the bottom part is the radical meaning knife (you can almost make out the picture of a cleaver), and the top part represents the thing being divided.