Posted 2017/3/13
The Chinese Character, an Interpretable Chinese CultureIt is a pictographic character, presenting a vertical view of a well.
In the Yellow River Basin, the soil is sandy in property, making it impossible to dig deep holes. So, to make a well, you need to dig a big pit. Then build well frames (shaped like the character) with heavy pieces of wood from the bottom of the pit layer by layer all the way to the ground. Then backfill the pit and ram the earth. An ancient well discovered in Gansu was built exactly like this. Our ancestors put a lot of effort in the creation of the character. They sort of recorded the well-building method in a picture for later generations.
A well plays an important part in agriculture. Every year during the Spring Festival, people would carry water from a well in the morning or afternoon of the New Year’s Eve, with every household filling their jars, basins and pots with well water as the stock for the first three days of the New Year. This practice is called “worshipping the well god”, which is meant to let the well god, who has provided water to people all the year round, have a break during the Spring Festival holiday. After the New Year break, the god is believed to make the well water better, sweeter and purer.
