xiàng fù zhī guān
Also rendered: office of the chancellor (Collapses 傅 into governing) · office of the prime minister (Same difficulty) · xiang fu zhi guan (Pinyin)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The lung’s office. What issues from it is 治節 — governance and regulation: the lung is what keeps the body’s motions measured and in season. 王冰：「位高非君，故官為相傅。」The word to watch is 傅, not 傳: the lung is the tutor who stands beside the ruler, not the chancellor who governs in his place.
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 | office of the chancellor / prime minister | Current, and makes the lung a deputy ruler. The text makes it the one who attends on the ruler instead. |
| This site | office of the minister and tutor | 傅 is the tutor: keeping both words stops 相傅 collapsing into 丞相, and keeps the lung beside the heart rather than in its place. |
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