wǔ lèi
Also rendered: The five classes (this site; 類 is a kind that resembles itself, and the five are named by their covering) · The five kinds of creature (descriptive; plain and correct, and it drops the sense of a class rather than a clutch of animals)
Reviewed · 2026-10-13
At a glance
The five orders of living creature, and the rule that decides which of them thrives in a given year: 六氣五類，有相勝制也。同者盛之，異者衰之. The classes are 毛、羽、倮、介、鱗 — hairy, feathered, naked, shelled, scaled — and each belongs to one of the five phases, so that a year’s qi is answered by the creatures whose phase it is or whose phase it overcomes. The chapter works this out twice: once in general, where it says that what resembles the qi flourishes and what differs from it declines, and once creature by creature, under each of the six 司天 and each of the six 在泉, where it names which is quiet, which breeds, and which does not come to term. This is the chapter’s answer to why child-bearing is uneven in a year — 歲有胎孕不育，治之不全 — and its answer is that the same year’s qi does not fall on the five alike.
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 | the five classes | the creatures of the five phases, taken as classes; the chapter's rule turns on resemblance, which 'classes' keeps |
| Transliteration | wu lei | right about the referent, and it explains nothing about covering or phase |
| Descriptive | the five orders of beast according to their covering | exact about the chapter's naming, and too long for a sentence that lists them |
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