sān bù sān lǐ
Also rendered: Three sectors and three miles (keeps both halves literally) · The three pulses and the three-li points (explicit, and it is long) · Three divisions, three distances (literal, and it misreads 里)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
One of the four signs of a life that reaches its term, and the only one that is felt rather than seen. The three sectors are the three divisions of the pulse — above, below and the middle — and the three miles are the points of that name on hand and foot; 起 means that they rise under the finger, full and close to the surface, not that the bone stands high. Set beside 骨高肉滿 the clause makes a pair: one speaks of the pulse, the other of the frame, and the chapter needs both because a long life is not a single tissue. The difficulty is that 三里 can mean a distance as easily as a point, and the commentators divide; the reading adopted here is the points, because the verb 起 belongs to what answers the hand.
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 sectors and three miles | the text's own words |
| Literal | three parts, three li | exact, and it is ambiguous in English too |
| Clinical | the three pulse sectors and the Sanli points | clear, and it interprets |
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