hé liú
Also rendered: Dried Stream (this site; 涸 is running dry at the source and 流 is the flowing, so the name is a stream that is still a stream and has nothing in it) · He liu (transliteration; how the name appears in tables of the fifteen circuits)
Reviewed · 2026-10-13
At a glance
Water falling short. 水曰涸流 — water is called dried stream — and its 紀 is 反陽: 涸流之紀，是謂反陽。藏令不舉，化氣乃昌，長氣宣布，蟄蟲不藏，土潤，水泉減，草木條茂，榮秀滿盛. The command of storing is not raised; the transforming qi is the one that prospers; the growing qi is spread abroad; the hibernating creatures do not hide; the earth is moist; the springs fall; the plants put out branches and are full of bloom. It is a mild and generous-looking year with the water gone out of it, and the chapter calls that 反陽 because the yang that should have gone under for the winter has come back up in its place. Its 從 is earth, 從土化也; its harm falls on the kidney, and its 眚 on the north. 靜順 is water storing and keeping low; 涸流 is the same water with nothing left to store.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| This site | dried stream | the flowing named and the water gone; the rendering keeps both halves, as 靜順 keeps storing and keeping low |
| Transliteration | he liu | right about the referent, and it says nothing about drying |
| Descriptive | water falling short | exact, and it loses the figure of the stream that makes the name answer 涸 |
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