shí wǔ bù zú
Also rendered: The fifteen vacities (keeps the pair with 盛) · The fifteen deficiencies (plainer, and it is the same idea) · The fifteen empty lodgings (interpretive, and it explains the passage)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
The second tally, and the one that makes the chapter a whole. Where the twelve were mostly states of excess, the fifteen are all lodgings of counterflow qi, and mostly in the palaces and the odd structures rather than the five stores: heart, lung, liver, spleen, kidney, bladder, stomach, large intestine, small intestine, gallbladder, the genitals, the neck, the shin, the thighs and arms, and the membrane of the bladder. Each has its dream — mountains and fire, flying with strange metal, a forest, a ruined house in a storm, a deep pool, walking, eating, fields, a crowded market, fighting and mutilation, intercourse, decapitation, walking unable to advance, bowing and rising, urine and stool. The rule closes it: supplement, and it stops. Excess is drained, deficiency supplemented, and the two counts together are the chapter.
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 | the fifteen vacities | the text's own count |
| Literal | fifteen insufficiencies | exact, and it is flat |
| Clinical | the fifteen deficiency patterns | clear, and it is an interpretation |
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