chū sān rù yī
Also rendered: Three out, one in (keeps the count and its plainness) · Three spent for one taken (explains it, and it is a gloss) · A deficit of three to one (clinical, and it is an interpretation)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
The arithmetic of breath, and the reason the chapter turns from flavours to food. Heaven and earth nourish a man with essence qi, and the great tally of that exchange is three out to one in: what is spent exceeds what is taken, and the excess is the cost of living. The sentence sits directly after the lungs are said to let breath out and take it in, so that the count is at once respiratory and dietary; and it is followed at once by the practical consequence — half a day without grain and the qi weakens, a full day and it is scant. The number is not a measurement but a warning: because the account runs at a deficit, food cannot be missed, and the five flavours that follow are the means of paying it.
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 | three out, one in | the text's own tally |
| Literal | out three, in one | exact, and it is cryptic |
| Clinical | expenditure exceeds intake threefold | clear, and it is a paraphrase |
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