One of the pleasures of learning Chinese is that, for certain characters and words, you could, without being at all a linguist, easily trace to its origin. It’s a kind of magic: you would feel, looking at the character, as if you had a conversation of some sort with the very first Chinese who scratched it, with a sharp flint, on the bone. And a delight, an echo across thousands of years, would rise in your heart as you think to yourself: Ah~~~, this is how you interpret the world!

You would, perhaps, draw this very image yourself if you were asked to draw a picture of rain:

The explanation of this character, 雨yǔ, is: the water falls from the cloud in the sky. The horizontal line on the top “一” means the sky, and the unclosed square around the drops “冂” means the cloud.

Though it’s almost always only used as a noun now(when you want to express “it rains”, you say, literally, down(fall) rain: 下雨xiàyǔ), but in the beginning, the character itself, 雨, meant the motion of the water falling from the cloud and it’s also used as a verb.

And there are two in the twenty-four solar terms(二十四节气 èrshísì jiéqì)–the twenty-four periods in traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar that matches a particular astronomical events or signifies some natural phenomenon–have “雨” in it: 雨水yǔshuǐ and 谷雨gǔyǔ.

The period 雨水 yǔshuǐ （literally Rain Water) “Spring Showers”–follows right after “Spring Commences”–is in the beginning of the spring.

The period 谷雨gǔyǔ (Wheat Rain or Grain Rain, indeed, the name itself comes from the ‘natural phenomenon’ that at the falling of rain and the heat of the sun, all grains grow) is at the end of spring, right before “Summer Commences”.

And 雨 is not at all thought a bad thing: ‘it moistens and waters the grains and plants’, the agriculture-rooted Chinese says.

泽雨无偏，心田受润 zé yǔ wú piān, xīntián shòu rùn : ‘rain is not partial, it not only moisturizes the field but also moisturize (comfort) the heart’, the Chinese philosopher says.

So I say, let it rain, let it stay, let it moisturize, comfort, both the plants and your heart, before the hot heat of summer starts.