zōng qì
Also rendered: ancestral qi (Literal, and current in scholarship) · gathering qi (The fixed technical term in the Wiseman system) · pectoral qi (Older English, from its place in the chest) · the qi of the ancestral hall (Over-literal for 宗)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
Chapter 18 gives the ancestral qi a place. It is at 虚里, the great network vessel of the stomach, which comes out below the left breast and beats strongly enough to stir the clothing; the chapter says plainly that this is 脉宗氣也, the qi the pulse descends from. Two things are read from it. Its quality tells where the disease is: full, panting, rapid and interrupted means the disease is in the centre; knotted and transverse means an accumulation; a beat that does not come at all is death. And when the beat is so large it moves the clothes, the ancestral qi itself is leaking out.
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.
| Wiseman & Feng 1998 | ancestral qi, or gathering qi | Both appear; gathering qi is the fixed technical term in that system. |
| This site | ancestral qi | 宗 is 尊祖廟, the hall of the ancestors — what a line returns to. The chapter is explicit that this is where the pulse comes from: 脉宗氣也, the qi the pulse is descended from. Gathering describes what it does and is the better-known term in modern practice, but the chapter's word points back to a source rather than forward to a collection, and ancestral keeps that direction. |
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Reading path
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