chóng qiáng
Also rendered: doubled rigidity (Literal, and keeps the compounding in 重) · heavy stiffness (Takes 重 as zhòng; also defensible) · repeated stiffness (Over-literal: 重 here is not repetition in time) · chong qiang (Bare transliteration)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
What the spleen’s deficiency is called. The chapter gives the spleen no normal pulse, only two disordered ones, and it gives each a consequence: excess leaves the four limbs unable to lift, and deficiency leaves the nine orifices blocked. The blocked state has its own name — 重強, doubled rigidity — a stiffness compounded: the limbs will not move and the passages will not open. Commentators have read 重 as chóng (doubled) or as zhòng (heavy), and 強 as qiáng (strong/stiff) or jiàng (unyielding); the two readings differ less than they sound, both describing a rigidity that has piled up on itself.
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 | (rare; rendered descriptively where it occurs) | Not a standard technical term in their glossary. |
| Common Chinese reading | 重 read chóng, 強 read qiáng | The majority reading; 王冰 reads it as a doubling of the stiffness. |
| This site | doubled rigidity | 重 in 說文 is 厚 — thick, and by extension layered — and 強 is borrowed from 彊, a bow under strain. Layered stiffness is what the chapter describes: the limbs will not lift and the orifices will not open, two rigidities at once. Heavy stiffness is the older alternative reading and is not wrong, but it makes 重 an adjective about degree where the text needs a word about compounding: the spleen irrigates the four quarters, so when it fails, everything it irrigated stiffens together. |
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