wǔ yuè
Also rendered: The five inspections (keeps the gate-image) · The five readings (plainer, and it is what the chapter does) · The five observations (clinical, and it loses the gate)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
The five inspections. The chapter’s first sentence names them without listing them: needling has five offices and five inspections, by which the five qi are watched. What follows supplies the list — nose for lung, eye for liver, lip for spleen, tongue for heart, ear for kidney — and then the colours that appear at each. The graph 閲 is a gate inspection, and it fixes the logic: the depots are not seen directly but reviewed at the openings, as a gatekeeper reviews what passes. The chapter’s other half, 五使, names the same five as envoys sent out by the depots, so that the same list is read once from inside and once from the threshold.
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 inspections | the text's own image |
| Literal | five reviews | exact, and it is thin in English |
| Clinical | the five facial diagnostic sites | clear, and it is an explanation |
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Reading path
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