Visiting qi · ke qi

At a glance

Pinyin

kè qì

Simplified

客气

Literal

客 kè — a guest, one who lodges where he does not belong; 氣 qì — qi. Visiting qi is the qi that arrives from outside and stays where it has no business staying, and the graph is the one 素問 uses for evil that has come to lodge: 客 carries the sense of sojourning, not of owning. The chapter gives the word once, in a sentence of four words, and puts its opposite beside it: 人有客氣，有同氣. What follows is not a gloss of either word but a rule about the passages, and the commentators have had to work out for themselves why the two are mentioned together. 馬蒔 and those with him take 客氣 as the evil that comes from without and 同氣 as the qi a person is born with; 張介賓 reads both through the doctrine of the circuit qi, so that 客氣 is the qi of the year that moves and never repeats and 同氣 is the qi of the season that is the same every year. The text itself says nothing that would settle it, and both readings are recorded here.

Shuowen

**「客」讀 kè，本篇1見，在「人有客氣」一句**；**「氣」讀 qì，本篇2見，皆在「客氣」「同氣」之内**；**「客氣」本篇1見，「同氣」1見，二字對舉**；**《說文》：客，寄也，从宀各聲；《玉篇》：客，賓客也**；**馬蒔：客氣者，外來之邪氣也；同氣者，吾身之正氣也**；**張介賓以運氣言之：客氣者，往來無常之氣；同氣者，歲歲相同之主氣**；**二說並存，本篇之文不足以定其一，故並錄之**；**「人」讀 rén、「有」讀 yǒu；「小大」讀 xiǎo dà，本篇3見**