féng shí
Also rendered: Catching the moment (plain, and it is vague) · Meeting the season (wrong, and 時 here is the hour not the season) · Meeting the time (the site's convention, keeping 逢)
Reviewed · 2026-10-26
At a glance
Meeting the time is the rule the whole of chapter 76 exists to make possible. The defending qi travels fifty circuits a day, twenty-five in the yang by day and twenty-five in the yin by night; at any moment it is in one channel and not another. So 刺實者，刺其來也；刺虚者，刺其去也 — drain as the qi arrives, fill as it departs — and 謹𠉀氣之所在而刺之，是謂逢時: watch where the qi is and needle there, and that is meeting the time. The chapter then gives the clock, counting the water in the clepsydra from one mark to twenty-five and naming the channel the qi is in at each. Miss it and 失時反𠉀者，百病不治 — the timing is not a refinement of the method, it is the method.
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 | meeting the time | the qi's hour |
| Literal | encountering the hour | exact, and stiff |
| Clinical | needling when the qi reaches the point | clear, and it explains the rule |
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