jīng zhōng
Also rendered: the ending of the channels (Literal; keeps 終's sense of finishing) · the termination of the conduits (Technical; conduit for 經) · the end of the channels (Plainer)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The second word of the chapter’s title, and the whole of its second half: 願聞十二經脉之終奈何. What follows is the book’s anatomy of dying — six passages, one for each pair of channels, naming the signs by which you will know that this channel has finished: the eyes carried upward, the sweat that comes at the end, the face black, the teeth seeming to lengthen. The chapter’s last line calls them 十二經之所敗, the ruin of the twelve channels.
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 end of the channels, or the termination of the channels | Termination is the technical choice and is common in modern writing. |
| This site | the ending of the channels | 終 is the finishing of a thread — the character is built on 糸, silk — and the chapter uses it for something that takes hours and days, not an instant: 絶系一日半死. Termination sounds like a switch being thrown; ending keeps the sense of a finishing, which is how the chapter writes it, and how a physician watching would experience it. |
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