‘Sky breaks’: in some China regions, lying flat can avoid bad luck; use ‘mending pancakes’

While many Chinese people joke that they “work like a dog” because they are anxious about dropping out of the rat race, there is a tradition in some areas that people can legitimately “lie flat” once a year to ward off bad luck.

The day is called tian chuan, or the day when the sky breaks. It usually falls on the 20th day of the first lunar month, and marks the day when the sky that Nuwa mended breaks once in a year.

Nuwa is a mythological figure, a mother goddess who is said to have moulded the first humans out of clay, and patched the tear in the sky with melted stones of five colours.

The tian chuan day falls around the same time of the Rain Water solar term, which is named after the first rains of the year.

There is also a folk belief that raining suggests that the sky Nuwa patched is breaking.

  

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