A child holds two hard-boiled eggs painted with the Chinese characters which mean "Start of Summer". [Photo/zjgonline.com.cn]

May 5 marks the Start of Summer, the seventh of the 24 solar terms in the traditional Chinese lunar calendar. On this day, residents in Zhangjiagang, a county-level city in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, usually do the following:

Eat three vegetables

Zhangjiagang residents customarily eat amaranth, green broad beans and garlic shoots on the Start of Summer.

Green broad beans are available on the market around this time every year and can be cooked in many ways or eaten cold with sauce.

Egg fighting

Locals in Zhangjiagang will put an unpeeled hard-boiled egg into a hand-woven mesh bag and dangle it around a child's neck on this day. Children will then play the "egg fighting game" in which they bump their eggs against one another. The winner is the person whose egg remains intact.

Weighing themselves

People usually weigh themselves on the Start of Summer to assess their health. It is also believed that measuring one's weight can help prevent the summer disease, symptoms of which include fever, lassitude and loss of appetite.

Drink "seven-surname tea"

Another traditional way to prevent summer ailments is drinking "seven-surname tea", which got its name from the way it is made – boiling with last year's charcoal collected from seven families with different surnames.

Eat toothed bur clover pancake

This pancake, made of chopped tender leaves of toothed bur clover and flour, is widely consumed by Zhangjiagang residents on the Start of Summer. People believe this cake helps to improve health and prevent ailments.