xíng bì xuè jìn
Also rendered: frame ruined and blood spent (Literal, keeps both clauses) · the body is exhausted and the blood used up (Loose and more clinical) · exhaustion of form and blood (Abstract)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The clinical picture with which the chapter poses its hardest question: a body worn out, a blood supply spent, and still no result from treatment. The point is that the phrase is not offered as an explanation — it is the situation, and 神不使也 is the explanation. Late in the chapter the frame appears again from the other side, in 形不可與衣相保, the body can no longer keep company with its clothes, which is oedema — and there a treatment is given.
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 | the body is exhausted and the blood is used up | The usual flattening of the two clauses into a description of exhaustion. |
| This site | frame ruined, blood spent | 弊 is not tiredness, it is something that has fallen over; 盡 is not depletion, it is a vessel with nothing in it. The chapter is describing a body that has lost the material a treatment would work on, and the two hard words are what make the next line — the spirit will not serve — the answer rather than a restatement. |
Search the glossary
Reading path
Guided routes through the corpus, each built on a handful of chapters and their key terms.
See all reading paths