The 24 Solar Terms
Lingering snow, spring water, farming and everyday scenes of welcoming spring explain how nature changes around the Start of Spring, blending seasonal knowledge into bright, continuous landscapes.
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01 / Background
“Start of Spring” is the first episode of the NDRC’s 24 Solar Terms series. It unfolds through landscapes, seasonal customs and an unhurried voiceover, telling where the Start of Spring comes from through concrete natural and cultural scenes.
The challenge was getting early spring just right: the north still has lingering snow and thin ice while the south is already turning green, so the images had to be bright and full of life yet still show that winter has only just ended and spring has only just arrived. The palette pairs a clear azure with the vermilion of palace walls, the gold of morning light and the white of lingering snow, every color distinct.
The film of about 69 seconds opens with plum blossoms by palace walls and a sundial, moves to an icy river, terraced fields and mechanized farming, and goes on to drumming, the spring ox, “biting spring,” putting up characters and paintings, a tea table by the stove and a dragon-shaped diabolo. Solar-term knowledge, farm work and a family’s hopes unfold step by step to the same rhythm.
02 / Creative Highlights
Northern scenes had to keep lingering snow, thin ice and drifting floes, paired with a pure blue sky and bright morning light. So palace walls, an icy river and warm light appear together in the film: spring has arrived, but the chill hasn’t fully gone, and the turn of the season comes through in these visible details.
The shot showing how people in ancient times observed the seasons uses the white marble sundial of the Forbidden City, with the stone, the direction of the light and the lingering snow rendered in fine detail. The film uses the warm white stone dial, its markings and the gnomon’s clear shadow to explain the origins of the solar term, grounding an abstract idea of time in a specific object.
A close-up of icicles pulls back to reveal cracking ice; tender leaves on a tea table lead the eye to tea picking and the tea hills. Camera moves and cuts keep a consistent rhythm, small close-ups join vast landscapes, and the sections that explain knowledge feel continuous too.
Drums, the spring ox and the five grains express hopes for farming; “biting spring,” putting up characters and paintings, and brewing tea around the stove move into the home; and a dragon-shaped diabolo before the Temple of Heaven brings out the excitement of welcoming spring together. Through people’s activities, the meaning of the solar term settles step by step into reunion, blessings and hopes for the days ahead.
03 / Scene Breakdown
The opening is set in the Forbidden City after snow: plum branches reach out in front of a red wall, magpies land on the branches, the vermilion palace gates slowly open, and the shot comes to rest on a white marble sundial, introducing the idea that “the Start of Spring comes from observing the seasons.”
A magpie flies past the plum branches, the camera pulls back to reveal snow-covered palace walls and roofs, and two magpies land on a branch. The voiceover gives the date: February 4, 2026, the Start of Spring.
Two vermilion palace gates studded with door nails swing open onto a snow-covered square and palace halls, matching “the Start of Spring is the first of the 24 solar terms.”
Snow still lingers on the sundial’s stone dial, and the gnomon’s shadow falls across the markings, with red walls, yellow tiles and blue sky behind. A visible object explains “observing the seasons.”
From a close-up of icicles to the cracking river, then to flooded terraced fields and egrets in the south, and finally rows of tractors working a wheat field: from changes in nature to spring plowing.
The camera pulls back from a cluster of icicles to reveal cracked ice and drifting floes, with the sun just rising in the distance. Traces of winter remain, but the ice is starting to loosen.
Egrets fly over flooded terraced fields that mirror the blue sky, with people working on the ridges, matching “the Start of Spring is an important moment in farming civilization.”
Shot from directly above, a row of red tractors in a diagonal line advances across a wheat field together, white dust rising behind them, matching “the Start of Spring signals the start of spring plowing.”
Drums, the spring ox and tossed grain show how people in the past welcomed spring, followed by spring pancakes, putting up the character for spring and brewing tea around the stove in a courtyard, as customs move from the public square all the way back home.
A drumstick strikes a big red drum, then a child in a red padded jacket swings a whip and walks toward a clay spring ox as dust rises in the sunlight.
A pair of hands tosses grain toward the blue sky, the golden kernels scattering against the light, matching “praying for good weather and a bountiful harvest.”
Hands roll up a spring pancake, with side dishes on the table; then a family puts up a big red character for “spring” on their door as a child stands under the ladder looking up.
In a courtyard under a persimmon tree, a clay teapot steams on a charcoal stove, and someone hands over a cup of hot tea, matching “conveying a longing for peace and smooth days ahead.”
Tender leaves by the tea table lead the camera into a tea garden, then to fish swimming in water among melting ice, explaining “the winter of storing away has ended, yang energy is rising, and all things begin to grow.”
After a close-up of tender leaves, a hand pinches off a tea tip, and the shot cuts to a whole tea hill in the mist. The hand up close and the hill in the distance share the same fresh green.
A patch of ice has melted, a few koi swim in the water, and willow branches hang in the foreground. The ancients said that at the Start of Spring “fish rise up to the ice,” and the shot follows that line exactly.
People spin a dragon-shaped diabolo before the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, and a final aerial shot shows an old town decked with lanterns at the foot of the Great Wall, landing on “hopes for a good harvest and a good life in the year ahead.” Then comes the “Presented by” end card.
First a wide shot of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests under a blue sky, then a group dressed in white spin a golden dragon-shaped diabolo, its long body tracing arcs in the air.
The rooftops of an old town are hung with red lanterns and kitchen smoke rises, with lingering snow and the Great Wall on the ridge behind; the film closes in the festive bustle of the New Year.
04 / Gallery
05 / Script Excerpts
06 / Results
We delivered the vertical Start of Spring short of about 69 seconds along with a matching cover, poster and landscape graphic, all as one set on February 4, 2026.
The Start of Spring episode has been published on WeChat Channels.
Case Study
The first of the 24 solar terms is the Start of Spring, and it’s also the first film in this series.
In just over a minute, it had to explain the origins, farm work and customs of the Start of Spring, and make it clear at a glance that winter has just left and spring has just arrived.
We made this vertical short of about 69 seconds, linking palace walls, an icy river, terraced fields, spring plowing and families welcoming spring, shot by shot.
01
A solar-term film shows landscapes, but it speaks in the voice of a national institution.
So the light had to be clean and upright: no gloomy tones, and no oppressive “cinematic” grading.
We first generated a batch of test images from the script. The cool blue silhouettes of the Forbidden City were quiet and beautiful, but for the Start of Spring they were too cold and too heavy.
So we swapped the cool blue for the kind you see on a clear February day in Beijing: azure, set against the palace walls’ vermilion, the morning light’s gold and the lingering snow’s white. With four clearly distinct colors, the base palette of the whole film was set.
Setting the palette wasn’t just a matter of taste. The “just right” balance of the Start of Spring lives in the colors too: the sky is warm and bright, while snow and ice still linger on the ground.
02
One line of the voiceover says: the Start of Spring comes from how ancient farming civilization observed the seasons.
That line is hard to film directly. The first plan used an armillary sphere at the Ancient Observatory; after some research, we switched to the Forbidden City’s Han white marble sundial: it’s more familiar to viewers, and its stone dial, markings and gnomon shadow already speak of “time.”
This one shot went through more than ten rounds of stills:
first we widened the framing to bring in the palace walls and blue sky; then we changed the light to front-side lighting so the face of the dial lit up; the melting snow at first looked like seeping water, so we adjusted it again and again until it had ice crystals and sheen, like snow softened by the winter sun; finally we checked against a real sundial and corrected the markings on the dial.
The gnomon’s shadow falls across the markings, the snow not yet fully melted, with red walls and yellow tiles behind.
03
The Start of Spring falls in early February. Many “beautiful spring images” don’t exist yet at that time of year.
So with every new shot, we checked first: in this season, in this place, does this scene really exist?
Northern scenes all got lingering snow and thin ice, the truest look of February; a shot of sprouts in black soil was too dark, so it became flooded terraced fields and egrets in the south, where water is already in the fields; the field shot first showed a farmer wiping sweat and gazing into the distance, but after we found that tractors hoe winter wheat around the Start of Spring, it became an overhead shot of a row of tractors advancing in formation.
Following the real farming calendar around the Start of Spring, an overhead shot of several tractors working at once.
The second half was the same: only after confirming that early tea can be picked in early February did we add tea picking and the tea hill; a shot of willows swaying in the wind was too plain, so it became “fish rise up to the ice” from the 72 pentads; the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests at the Temple of Heaven is where people in ancient times prayed for grain in spring, and Beijing also has a custom of spinning diabolos to welcome spring, which gave us the dragon-shaped diabolo before the Hall.
Before the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, a group spins a golden dragon-shaped diabolo.
04
The whole film is set to a gentle voiceover, with a slow pace. The biggest risk of going slow is turning into a slideshow of landscape photos.
We set a few rules for the shots: if one shot pulls back, the next keeps pulling back or holds steady, never suddenly reversing; push, pull, pan and track moves alternate, and two symmetrical compositions don’t both get a straight push-in; wide shots and close-ups take turns.
The ice river sequence at the start was arranged this way. The original script had the snowy Great Wall first, then a close-up of icicles; we reversed it: start right up against a cluster of icicles, then slowly pull back to reveal the whole cracking river.
Starting from a small detail, the camera pulls all the way back to the open ice.
The tea-picking section at first used three consecutive transition shots to reach the wide view of the tea hill, which felt a bit roundabout. Changing it to two linked shots with a direct cut to the wide view on the third made it cleaner.
Tender leaves, the hand picking tea, then a direct cut to the whole tea hill.
05
The Start of Spring is the first episode of the 24 Solar Terms series, and every solar term after it builds on it.
What this episode established became the series’ rules: bright images and clean colors; every shot checked for season and location before asking whether it looks good; the “Good morning, today is…” opening, a unified caption style and the institution’s end card; and covers, posters and landscape graphics sharing one solar-term visual system.
What viewers see is a short of just over a minute: the snow hasn’t melted, the plum blossoms bloom first, the ice cracks, and the tractors in the fields are already moving.
That’s what the Start of Spring is about: winter has just ended, and spring has just begun.
FAQ
Every shot is researched before images are generated. The Start of Spring falls in early February, so all northern scenes keep lingering snow and thin ice; the spring plowing shot follows the real farm work of tractors hoeing winter wheat around the Start of Spring; tea picking, “fish rise up to the ice” and praying for grain at the Temple of Heaven were all checked for season and location too.
For this film, we generated a batch of test images before choosing a direction. The cool blue tones felt too heavy, so we settled on an azure sky, vermilion palace walls, golden morning light and the white of lingering snow: bright images with clean, upright lighting, suitable for public release by a government institution.
The Start of Spring episode delivered a vertical film of about 69 seconds (1080×1920), plus a video cover, poster and landscape graphic, with captions, fonts and the institution’s logo unified across the set, ready to use on vertical platforms such as WeChat Channels.
Yes. The Start of Spring is the first episode of the 24 Solar Terms series; later episodes such as Spring Equinox and Start of Summer keep the same opening voiceover, caption style and end card, while each episode changes its scenes to fit its own solar term.
Approach
Building on the existing script and storyboard, we adjusted the scenes shot by shot, checking that objects, regional landscapes and the season all matched. At the still-image stage, we first set the overall palette of azure, vermilion and golden morning light, then refined the sundial’s material, the lingering snow and the composition of the farming scenes.
At the motion stage, push and pull moves alternated with different shot sizes, and the tea-picking section got specific adjustments to its transitions and the pace of the cut to the hand close-up. The cover, poster, landscape graphic and end card share one solar-term visual system, and caption and logo styles are unified throughout the film.
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