chēn zhàng
Also rendered: Distension from rising turbidity (this site; the compound is expanded because 䐜 alone says only that the flesh is swollen upward) · Chen zhang (transliteration; used when the pair with 飱泄 is cited whole)
Reviewed · 2026-10-11
At a glance
Distension of the belly from turbidity that has risen instead of descending. Suwen 5 gives it in the chapter’s first paragraph, paired with food-diarrhoea and explaining itself: 清氣在下,則生飱泄;濁氣在上,則生䐜脹. What should rise has gone down and produces the diarrhoea; what should descend has gone up and produces the distension. The chapter then names the whole state 陰陽反作 — yin and yang acting in reverse — and calls the pair the two directions a disease can run, 逆從. Wang Bing is exact about the graph: 䐜 is the flesh swelling up.
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.
| This site | Distension from rising turbidity · chen zhang | keeps both halves of the pair visible: the swelling and the direction it came from |
| Literal | fleshy swelling and distension | faithful to 䐜 and 脹, but reads as two symptoms rather than one |
| Clinical | abdominal distension | what it is in practice; right about the symptom, silent about how it got there |
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