dà shù
Also rendered: The great transport (keeps 腧 as transport, the site's convention) · The great shu point (transliterates, and it says nothing to a reader) · The great back point (plain, and it loses the rank the name claims)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
The first of the back transport points, and the one that gives the row its name. It lies at the end of the shuttle bone — 杼骨, the high bone of the first vertebra — which is why later needling identified it with Dazhu, just below the nape. The chapter’s interest is not the point but the order: the five viscera are reached from the back, and the great transport is where the count begins. Its position is stated before any other, and the rest follow at the fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh and fourteenth vertebra, so that the spine becomes a map of the organs. The name is therefore a claim about rank: of all the transports on the back this is the great one, the one through which the whole row is entered.
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 great transport | the text's own rank |
| Literal | the great hollow | exact, and it is opaque |
| Clinical | Dazhu, the first back transport | clear, and it is an identification |
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