xiāng shū yìng
Also rendered: Mutual transport and response (this site; both verbs are kept, because the relation needs both) · Corresponding conveyance (literal, and corresponding flattens the answering in 應)
Reviewed · 2026-10-17
At a glance
The phrase is the chapter’s summary of what makes its astronomy and its medicine one subject. 此皆陰陽表裏、上下、雌雄相輸應也 — all of these are yin and yang, exterior and interior, above and below, female and male, conveying to one another and answering one another. The list is not decorative: each pair is a relation in which one term delivers and the other responds, and the chapter’s claim is that the same relation holds in the sky and in the body. That is why the sentence can continue without a break into 而道上知天文，下知地理，中知人事，可以長久 — the Way reaches up to astronomy, down to geography, and in the middle to human affairs, and so it can last. A parallel sentence stands elsewhere in the Suwen with 內外 where this one has 上下 (id 292); the variation is worth noticing, because it shows the list is a schema of relations rather than a fixed formula.
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 | mutual transport and response | keeps delivery and answer apart, which is what the four pairs do |
| Literal | mutually conveying and answering | exact, and it is clumsy as a headword |
| Descriptive | the pairs answering one another | clear, and it loses the movement in 輸 |
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