hún shù wéi yī
Also rendered: Bound into one (keeps the knot) · Gathered and bound as one (fuller, and it is slower) · Reduced to a single principle (interpretive, and it loses the image)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
The phrase the whole chapter turns on, and the one the next chapter quotes back. The Emperor has the nine needles as nine chapters and nine instruments; what he lacks is the knot that holds them. 渾 is the word for what has not yet been divided, 束 the word for tying a bundle, and the compound is a demand for a method that is one thing rather than nine. Qi Bo’s answer is three images — sun and moon, water and mirror, drum and echo — each an inside read from an outside without delay, and the closing formula of examination is the knot itself. 《禁服》 opens with Lei Gong quoting this very phrase at the Emperor and asking what it means, which is the book’s own way of saying that the chapter succeeded: the question was answered, and the answer became a text.
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 | bound into one | the text's own figure |
| Literal | bundled together into one | exact, and it is clumsy |
| Methodological | compressed to a single method | clear, and it is an explanation |
Search the glossary
Reading path
Guided routes through the corpus, each built on a handful of chapters and their key terms.
See all reading paths