Summer is on the way. The solar term of the Beginning of Summer falls on the fifth or sixth of May each year. As more thunderstorms bring enough rain, fields seeded in spring grow fast in the coming summer, with frogs croaking and earthworms aerating the soil for farmers. People are starting to put their winter clothes back in the closets.
Expecting a lot of muggy weather, people tend to take food rich in vitamins and fibers and avoid oily and spicy food. In the dear childhood memory of many Chinese, on this day, their parents would give them an egg put in a loose-knit pouch and encourage them to bump their eggs with others’ eggs to see whose was the strongest. It was believed that the kid whose egg was the last to be broken would be the most healthy kid of the group.
Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
