zàng xiàng
Also rendered: visceral manifestation (The standard modern rendering) · organ manifestations (Plural, and drops 藏) · zangxiang (Pinyin, as used in Chinese medicine)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The word this chapter gives to its own method, and the one it takes as its title. A storing organ cannot be seen, but what it is doing shows: the heart in the face, the lung in the body hair, the kidney in the hair of the head, the liver in the nails, the spleen group in the four whites of the lips. Each is given three things — what it is the root of (本), where it blooms (華), and what it fills (充). This is the beginning of the whole habit of reading the inside from the outside.
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 | visceral manifestation | Standard, and the one that has stuck in English-language Chinese medicine. |
| This site | visceral manifestation | Kept, with 藏 rendered as storing as it is everywhere on this site, so that 藏象 reads as the image of what stores. Manifestation rather than image because 象 is what shows, not a picture of it. |
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