rì dié
Also rendered: the declining sun (Keeps the image; says nothing false about hours) · mid-afternoon (Converts it, and quietly loses that it is the sun that declines) · the wei hour (The watch-keeping rendering) · ri die (Bare transliteration)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
Spleen illness is clear when the sun declines and worse at sunrise, the reverse of what most readers expect from a yang organ, and the reason is the hour rather than the light: the earth phase holds sway in the wei hour, so the spleen — earth — is clear then, and sunrise belongs to wood, which conquers it. The chapter uses only these two marks for the spleen, dawn to afternoon like the others but with its own two points, because these are the two hours its fate turns on.
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 | (rendered by the double hour) | Words for the day's divisions are usually given by their watch rather than translated. |
| Unschuld | the time when the sun is past the zenith | He translates the picture, which is what the graph actually puts before the reader. |
| This site | the declining sun | Chinese names this hour by looking up, and so can English. The hour cannot be pinned down more exactly without pretending the text was written with clocks. |
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