zhōu dū zhī guān
Also rendered: office of the reservoir (Current, and loses 都) · office of the water capital (Keeps both halves, at the cost of strangeness)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The bladder’s office, and the only one in the list whose action is made conditional. Fluids are stored there — 津液藏焉 — and they leave only when qi transforms them: 氣化則能出矣. 州都 is the seat to which water is brought and where it gathers, which is why reservoir is the common rendering and why it is not quite enough: 都 is a capital, not a tank.
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.
| Common English | office of the reservoir | Standard. A reservoir stores; it is not a seat to which things are brought. |
| This site | office of the regional capital | 州 is the region and 都 the seat — the word pictures a district and its capital, not a container. The rendering is kept because the chapter's own next words (津液藏焉) already say that it stores. |
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