Five Grains

The Five Grains or Cereals (traditional Chinese: 五穀; simplified Chinese: 五谷; pinyin: Wǔ Gǔ) are a grouping (or set of groupings) of five farmed crops that were all important in ancient China. Sometimes the crops themselves were regarded as sacred; other times, their cultivation was regarded as a sacred boon from a mythological or supernatural source. More generally, wǔgǔ can be employed in Chinese as a synecdoche referring to all grains or staple crops of which the end produce is of a granular nature. The identity of the five grains has varied over time, with different authors identifying different grains or even categories of grains.

This article is about the five grain crops important to China. For the five grain crops that cause leavening at Passover, see Five species of grain.
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