bái hēi féi shòu
Also rendered: Complexion and build (names both pairs) · Colour and flesh (literal, and it is closer to the text) · Body type (modern, and it flattens four variables into one)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
The four variables by which the chapter grades a patient before it grades the needle. The question is put at the turn of the chapter: pale or dark, fat or thin, small or tall — does each have its own number? The answers that follow sort men into the fat, the thin, the ordinary, the strong-boned and the infant, and give each a depth and a speed. 白黑 is complexion and 肥瘦 is flesh, and the chapter joins them into one compound because together they name what the physician must look at before choosing a needle; the whole second half of the chapter is the elaboration of that one question.
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 | complexion and build | the two pairs the chapter asks about |
| Literal | white, black, fat, thin | exact, and it reads as a list |
| Clinical | somatotype and complexion | clear, and it is technical |
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