píng qì
Also rendered: normal qi (Common, and vague) · even qi (平 as level) · peaceful qi (Reads 平 as a temperament)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
Qibo’s answer to the question of 平氣 takes one clause: 無過者也 — that which does not go past. In a chapter where everything is counted and timed, the healthy case is defined negatively, as the absence of overstepping. It is one of the shortest definitions in the Suwen, and the whole of the chapter’s medicine hangs on it: know the season, know whether the qi came, and you know which of the three you are looking at.
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 | normal qi / balanced qi | Both current; normal is the vaguer of the two. |
| This site | balanced qi | 平 here measures a clock, not a disposition. Peaceful qi would suggest a quality of the qi itself, when what the chapter says is that it arrived neither early nor late. |
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