Today is April 4, 2022, Monday, the day before the Qingming Festival (also known as the Cold Food Festival).
On this day, it is customary to refrain from lighting fires and only eat cold food. Over time, customs such as tomb-sweeping, spring outings, swinging, cuju (a traditional ball game), kite flying, and cockfighting have gradually increased, and the Cold Food Festival has lasted for more than two thousand years, once known as the largest folk festival in China. The Cold Food Festival is the only traditional festival of the Han nationality named after a food custom. According to historical records, the origin of the Cold Food Festival dates back to the Spring and Autumn period when the nobleman Chong'er of the Jin state fled to other countries for nineteen years to escape turmoil, and his minister Jie Zitui always followed him, never leaving his side; he even "cut his own flesh to feed his lord." Chong'er worked hard and became the famous ruler "Duke Wen of Jin." However, Jie Zitui sought no personal gain and returned to the Mianshan Mountains with his mother. In order to force him to come out, Duke Wen ordered the mountains to be set on fire, but Jie Zitui resolutely refused to leave and ultimately perished in the flames. Duke Wen, moved by the loyalty of his minister, buried him in Mianshan, built a temple, and ordered a fire ban and cold food observance on the day of Jie Zitui's death to express his sorrow.
As for today, I cannot conclude whether I will only eat cold food. On one hand, I haven't eaten yet, and on the other hand, there shouldn't be much cold food sold at school. — The time has come to 5 PM; I had the legendary super spicy beef hot pot rice noodles for lunch, which was actually not that bad. For a Sichuan person, it was just an average level of spiciness, but I was quite shocked to find such spicy food in Wuhan.
I suddenly realized that I had written 400 words without getting to the main topic; I should summarize the events of March. The early spring weather in Wuhan is truly perplexing; to sum it up in one sentence, it feels like summer one moment and winter the next. Spring and autumn have long disappeared since the Warring States period. I was always ready to add or remove clothing, which ultimately did not lead to a cold.
I attended a few classes of the Python elective course, which covered basic syntax and was somewhat boring, but I did gain some new insights. I bought a book titled "Python 3 Web Scraping Development Practical (Second Edition)" and read about one-third of it during my spare time. I also opened a GitHub Repo, which I found quite interesting, and I believe I can keep it up without any issues.
At the end of the month, I took the midterm test for quantum mechanics, and I felt it went relatively well; the specific results will be mentioned in next month's report. I haven't touched engineering drawing much, but there are many deadlines for it in April, so I have to start studying. Also, I must complain about the courses on the basics of materials science, crystallography, and solid-state physics; the content of these three courses is almost identical, with repetitive discussions on unit cells and Bravais lattices, which is quite frustrating. The physical chemistry teacher, Li Yuan (not Emperor Gaozu of Tang), left a deep impression on me as he is one of the few teachers in college who speaks some practical truths to undergraduates, so I have "noted him down."
In summary, March was relatively calm (is there a hidden vortex beneath the calm surface?), and as April begins, exams and deadlines are coming one after another. I feel like this semester is passing a bit quickly; is it because this semester is short, or is it that as I get older, time seems to fly by faster? owo