Why Do the Same Illnesses Need Different Treatments in the East, West, North and South? Doctor Luo Dalun Presents Doctor Ni Haixia’s Eighteenth Lecture on the Huang Di Nei Jing — the Yi Fa Fang Yi Lun (On the Suitability of Methods According to Place), the Yi Jing Bian Qi Lun (On Moving the Essence and Transforming Qi) and the Tang Ye Liao Li Lun (On Soups, Wines and Fermented Drinks)

Patient search terms: afraid of acupuncture / does acupuncture hurt? / afraid to be needled / medicine tastes too bitter / a patient who refuses to take medicine / washing skin disease with herbs / inhaling medicinal steam / what is moxibustion good for? / how to treat cold patterns / cold hands and feet / bloated belly / joint pain and numbness / boils and pus / sores and abscesses (yong yang) / green face / deathly pale face / how does Chinese medicine take the pulse? / what can pulse diagnosis detect? / five-color diagnosis / can psychological comfort cure disease? / lonely elderly people going to the doctor / is constipation related to emotions? / constipation from anger / making wine from glutinous rice / what is zhu you (incantation healing)?

Corresponding medical names: Su Wen · Yi Fa Fang Yi Lun (On the Suitability of Methods According to Place, chapter twelve) · the terrain makes it so (di shi shi ran ye) · the eastern land of fishing and salt · fish makes one hot in the center (re zhong) · salt conquers the blood (yan zhe sheng xue) · yin insufficiency with yang excess (yin bu zu yang you yu) · abscesses and sores (yong yang) · stone needles (bian shi) · the western land of metal and jade · rich fatty food (hua shi zhi fei) · disease arising from within (bing sheng yu nei) · medicinal poisons (du yao) · the poison of Chinese herbs versus the poison of Western drugs · steroids (the American wonder pill) · moon face · the six yang channels converge (liu yang jiao hui) · dosage and timing · the northern land of seclusion and storage · milk foods · cold viscera generate fullness diseases (zang han sheng man bing) · moxibustion (jiu ruo) · the southern land of growth · where yang abounds (yang zhi suo sheng) · weak soil and water, mist and dew gathering · sour and fermented food · the interstices (cou li) · cramping and numbness (luan bi) · the nine needles / fine needles (jiu zhen / wei zhen) · the central land, level and damp · eating everything and not laboring · wilting, reversal, cold and heat (wei jue han re) · guiding and stretching and massage (dao yin an qiao) · the sage combines all methods, each gets what suits it (za he yi zhi, ge de suo yi) · Su Wen · Yi Jing Bian Qi Lun (On Moving the Essence and Transforming Qi, chapter thirteen) · incantation healing (zhu you) · the tranquil ancients · moving to ward off cold, staying in shade to escape heat · no ambitions within, no seeking of office without (nei wu juan mu zhi lei, wai wu shen guan zhi xing) · the pathogen cannot penetrate deeply · moving the essence and transforming qi (yi jing zhu you) · the placebo · today’s worry binds within and toil injures without (you huan yuan qi nei, ku xing shang qi wai) · thieves of wind arriving constantly, deficiency pathogens morning and evening (zei feng shu zhi, xu xie zhao xi) · small illnesses become severe, great illnesses end in death · the complexion and pulse are what heaven treasures (se mai zhe shang di zhi suo gui) · the former master (Jiu Dai Ji) · ordering the complexion and pulse and reaching the spirit (li se mai er tong shen ming) · the five phases and five movements · the four seasons, eight winds and six directions · changes shifting one into another, observing the wonder (bian hua xiang yi yi guan qi miao) · the normal person (chang ren) · complexion responds to the sun, pulse to the moon · green, red, yellow, white, black · wiry, flooding, relaxed, floating, deep (xian, hong, huan, fu, chen) · the five pathogens · the thief pathogen (zei xie, metal conquering wood) · mother generating child (mu sheng zi) · middle antiquity · ten days of soup to remove the eight winds and five bi (tang ye shi ri yi qu ba feng wu bi) · cao su (plant stems and leaves) and cao gai (plant roots) · the soup taken internally or washed externally · the three uses of external washing · the present age does not do it this way (jin shi zhi zhi ze bu ran) · looking, listening, asking, feeling (wang wen wen qie) · the supreme rule: never lose the complexion and pulse (zhi zhi yao ji, wu shi se mai) · reversing order and going against the flow, root and branch not matched · losing the spirit, losing the state (wang shen shi guo) · discarding the old and taking up the new, becoming a true person (qu gu jiu xin nai de zhen ren) · Su Wen · Tang Ye Liao Li Lun (On Soups, Wines and Fermented Drinks, chapter fourteen) · making the five grains into soups and fermented drinks (wei wu gu tang ye ji lao li) · cooking glutinous rice with rice straw (bi yi dao mi chui zhi dao xin) · rice is complete, rice straw is firm (dao mi zhe wan, dao xin zhe jian) · glutinous rice makes the best wine · receiving the harmony of heaven and earth, the fitting of high and low (de tian di zhi he, gao xia zhi yi) · harvested in its season (fa qu de shi) · image and number (xiang and shu) · observing things by their image (yong xiang guan wu)

Opening scene: the old lady who is afraid of needles and medicine — then why did you come?

This lecture opens with a scene every Chinese medicine practitioner has met — the patient who arrives refusing everything:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Some patients are afraid of acupuncture. You tell them how wonderful and clever Chinese medicine is — they still do not want it. Some patients will not even let you treat the disease. And these people all must be treated — Qi Bo said the same thing, it is not just us saying it. You often meet patients like this, and it is very funny: an old lady comes in and says, “Medicine? Oh, I cannot cook herbs — the neighbor would smell the medicinal odor and revolt.” — She just does not want to take it, but she pretends the neighbor would revolt at the smell. Fine, you do not want the soup — shall we give you pills? “Pills? I cannot swallow them.” Capsules? “Even less.” Then powder — “Powder is too bitter.” Then let me needle you — “I do not like acupuncture.” Then why did you come? And she thinks: right, why did I come?

The old lady came to the doctor’s office to be “pampered”: she looks at the doctor and feels at ease — at least she has seen a doctor. Patients like this exist in every era. So to be a physician you first need patience, and you also need to see through what the patient really wants.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Our ancient Chinese books have been handed down for thousands of years — too long — and some chapters have been lost. So just now you heard the pulse theory of the qi kou, and suddenly we jump to the relationship between patient and doctor — it seems a bit disconnected. There is nothing we can do about it, because this is how it has been handed down; parts of the books are missing.

Why does the same illness get different treatments in different places?

Now we enter chapter twelve, the Yi Fa Fang Yi Lun. The Yellow Emperor asks: the same illness can be cured by very different methods — why?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Qi Bo answers: the terrain makes it so (di shi shi ran ye) — because the place and region are different. So this chapter discusses how people of different regions must be treated with different methods.

The east: eating fish and salt breeds abscesses — stone needling comes from here

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The eastern region is where heaven and earth begin to generate; it is a land of fishing and salt, by the sea and near the water. The people eat fish and love salty flavors; their days are comfortable and their food delicious. “Fish makes one hot in the center” — what does hot in the center (re zhong) mean? Yin is insufficient and yang is in excess. “Salt conquers the blood” — the salty flavor can seep into the blood. We can eat salt, but not to excess; you cannot sprinkle it by the handful. Too salty will not do.

The nature of fish is yin insufficiency with yang excess; conversely, if a person’s yang is insufficient, let him eat more fish. Easterners live by the sea, their skin is darker, and the diseases they get are mostly abscesses and sores (yong yang) — festering, suppurating — because the heat in the center and the damp-heat are strong. What treats this kind of disease? Stone needles (bian shi). So the art of stone needling came from the east.

The west: a city of metal and jade, internal disease treated with medicinal poisons — “today’s poisons really do come from the West”

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The western region is the land of metal and jade — sandy, rocky ground produces metal and jade; our Hetian jade and gold of Xinjiang, the gold mountains, all lie to our west. It is where heaven and earth draw in and gather. The people live high in the mountains, where the wind is abundant and the soil and water are hard and strong. They wear fur and leather and eat very rich food — much meat, much fat. Because of the climate, their body surface is extremely strong and the pathogen cannot injure their bodies — their diseases all arise from within. Diseases arising from within must be treated with medicinal poisons (du yao). So medicinal poisons came from the west.

At this point Doctor Ni makes a joke — and brings out the true meaning of Chinese herbal medicine:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Today’s poisons really do come from the West — Qi Bo knew it thousands of years ago, impressive, is it not! Our materia medica also has many poisons, and of all the people in Chinese medicine I am probably the one who uses poisons most fiercely. Why do I use poisons? Because the poison of Chinese herbs is different from the poison of Western drugs — I understand the poison of Western drugs too well, so I switched to the poison of Chinese herbs. Internal disease absolutely must use poisons, because surface disease is cured by releasing the exterior — no poison needed; for internal disease, the technique and the dosage of the poison are everything. The biggest problems in Chinese medicine today are dosage and timing. When we use poisons, it is one dose, one prescription — it must hit the mark exactly, and after the disease is gone the patient’s spirit recovers very fast.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The poison of Western drugs is different: it is extremely poisonous. A tiny pill enters the body with great destructive power, and it has no target. On the surface it says “lower cholesterol,” “lower blood sugar” — it looks targeted, but the side effects it creates, it does not even know about itself — it wanders aimlessly. Take steroids: skin disease — steroids; asthma — steroids; when nothing else works, steroids — they call it the “American wonder pill.” People on steroids get very fat faces — the moon face. The face is where the six yang channels converge; the yang has all been destroyed. So when we use medicine, it goes exactly where it is sent — it is obedient. Not like Western medicine, which cannot be controlled. When you later study the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing (Classic of the Materia Medica) you will understand: Chinese medicine is very simple, and at the same time very refined — because we understand the internal organs extremely finely, using medicine becomes very simple, and curing disease becomes very simple.

The north: frozen wasteland, cold viscera generating fullness diseases — moxibustion comes from here

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The northern region is where heaven and earth seclude and store. The land is high; people live up in the mountains, where wind and cold are biting — extremely cold. The people live out in the wilds and eat milk products. The viscera become cold — and cold viscera generate fullness diseases (zang han sheng man bing). This kind of disease is treated with moxibustion (jiu ruo). So moxibustion came from the north. We use moxa best for cold patterns; for heat patterns, needling is better than moxa.

The south: damp-heat lands with cramping and numbness — the nine needles come from here

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The southern region is where heaven and earth nourish and grow — matching the four seasons, the south is where “growth” lives, the place where yang abounds (yang zhi suo sheng). The soil and water below are weak, and mist and dew gather. The people love sour food and fermented food. Because the south is hot with abundant sun, people’s skin texture is fine and their color is red. Such people easily suffer cramping and numbness — luan bi. At this point we use fine needles. So the nine needles (jiu zhen) came in from the south.

Doctor Ni adds a practical clinical note: in Taiwan, in Florida — tropical places — we use many needles; up north where it is very cold, moxa is better — because it is cold up north, taking your clothes off for needling makes you colder, so moxibustion is the better choice.

The center: eating without labor breeds wilting and reversal — guiding and stretching comes from here

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The last line of page 93: the central region has level, damp ground — it is where heaven and earth generate the ten thousand things, with every kind of product. The people eat everything and do not labor — why do they not labor? Because obtaining food is too easy: earth generates the ten thousand things, everything grows, so they do not work as much as the people of the four directions. The diseases such people get most are wilting, reversal, cold and heat (wei jue han re) — because they do not labor and do not move much. Treat them with guiding and stretching and massage (dao yin an qiao) — that is, practicing martial arts and exercise. So guiding and stretching came out of the center. Look at Shaolin Temple on Mount Song in Henan — all the martial arts come out of the center.

So a truly good physician must “combine all methods, and each gets what suits it”:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The sage — not only the sage, but any truly good physician — must look at the situation and treat accordingly. If your clinic is in the north — say, North America, Canada — you will use moxa more than needles, guaranteed, because the weather is cold. If you use a lot of moxa, the smell in the room gets heavy — you had better open a skylight, install an exhaust fan, and pump the smoke out, or you cannot stand it. And that moxa smoke smells exactly like marijuana — even the police make mistakes about it! So we must use different methods according to the place — and the disease will be cured either way. A doctor must know to adapt to the time and the place.

The Yi Jing Bian Qi Lun: in antiquity, people were cured by a spell?

Chapter thirteen is called the Yi Jing Bian Qi Lun (On Moving the Essence and Transforming Qi). The Yellow Emperor asks: in ancient times, people treated illness by moving the essence and transforming qi — one could simply use zhu you, incantation healing. Zhu you were the ritual healers, the shamans. Ancient Egypt had them, many old empires did; China had them too, and so did the native peoples of the Americas. In the past the zhu you healer chanted charms and cured the illness. Today people use poisons to treat the inside and needles and stones to treat the outside, and some are cured and some are not. Why are the ancients and the people of today so different?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Qi Bo says: because the ancients lived among birds and beasts — we live in a concrete forest; in the old days a tiger would often wander right into the neighbor’s house looking for food. When the weather turned cold, there was no heating, so they had to move, to exercise, to generate warmth; when summer was too hot, they hid in the shade of trees and in caves to escape the heat. Within, there was no burden of longing and ambition — buy an LV bag? become vice president? Nothing like that existed; without, there was no form of seeking office (nei wu juan mu zhi lei, wai wu shen guan zhi xing). People were extremely tranquil, indifferent to fame and gain, with no joy, anger, worry, thought, sorrow, fear or fright in their hearts — very plain. In this state, the pathogen cannot penetrate deeply into the body. So no poisons were needed to treat the inside, no needles and stones to treat the outside — one could simply move the essence and transform qi (yi jing zhu you). That is to say: when you have a tiny illness, a little spiritual comfort is enough to make it well.

The placebo and the “fake needling”: Doctor Ni’s modern zhu you

At this point Doctor Ni demonstrates a modern version of zhu you on the spot:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Some patients simply need spirit and comfort. The patient says the medicine is too bitter — what to do? No problem: take some sugar, mix it with a little salt, have them take it home and dissolve it in water and drink it — it is not bitter at all, and they will sleep very well. The patient does not know what it was, and goes home. Another patient is afraid of needles: you feel the pulse — it is a floating pulse, the disease is very shallow; no medicine needed, just induce a sweat and it is done. Simple: have him lie on the treatment bed, pick up the needle, and scratch the skin with the point — you have not pierced at all, you only let the skin feel “he is about to insert the needle.” He startles — the yang rises — he sweats — and the illness is gone. It is just like zhu you: he did not even see you chant anything; you simply made the patient feel that you did something for him, he relaxes, and the illness is cured.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The main thing is, in antiquity, people in that environment had no desires and were all tranquil, keeping their mood cheerful, so their illnesses were all extremely shallow. But in the present world it will not do — worry binds within, toil injures without (you huan yuan qi nei, ku xing shang qi wai): everyone must go out to work for money, labor, and worry about the children at home with no one to watch them; you cannot care for yourself according to spring growth, summer flourishing, autumn harvest and winter storage. So thieves of wind arrive constantly and deficiency pathogens come morning and evening (zei feng shu zhi, xu xie zhao xi) — reaching the five viscera and bone marrow within, injuring the orifices and skin without — small illnesses necessarily become severe, and great illnesses end in death. At this point the power of zhu you is not enough — because it is a matter of the emotions.

The Yellow Emperor wants to see patients himself: the two characters “complexion and pulse,” treasured by heaven

On page 96 the Yellow Emperor says: I now wish to examine patients myself, to observe life and death and decide doubtful cases — how can I see disease as clearly as “sun and moonlight,” with nothing escaping my eyes?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Qi Bo answers: the complexion and the pulse (se mai) are what heaven treasures, transmitted by the former master (se mai zhe, shang di zhi suo gui ye, xian shi zhi suo chuan ye). The “heaven” here is not the god of religion — it means the things of heaven and earth, of the cosmos. The most important things we look at are the complexion and the pulse: se is inspection, looking at the color; mai is pulse diagnosis. In high antiquity Jiu Dai Ji — according to legend, Qi Bo’s own teacher — ordered the complexion and pulse and reached the spirit (li se mai er tong shen ming); he understood them extremely well. Then combine them with the five phases of wood, fire, earth, metal and water, the five movements, the four seasons, the eight winds and the six directions (front, back, left, right, above, below), and observe everything by the normal principles — changes shifting one into another, to see the wonder (bian hua xiang yi, yi guan qi miao). When we understand what is normal, we know what is abnormal.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: I often tell my patients: we doctors must know what the normal person (chang ren) is. If you do not know the normal person, you may cure a disease and not even know you cured it — you are cured and you do not realize it. “The complexion responds to the sun, the pulse responds to the moon; always seek the essential and you will have the essential.” You have studied twelve chapters; just grasp these two — complexion and pulse. Never learn anything else, only specialize in the complexion and the pulse, and you will never go wrong.

The five colors match the five pulses: green with the wiry pulse, metal conquering wood is the thief pathogen

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: As for colors: the liver, heart, spleen, lung and kidney match green, red, yellow, white and black. As for pulses: wiry, flooding, relaxed, floating, deep (xian, hong, huan, fu, chen) — the basic general principles. The liver matches green and the wiry pulse. When we look at the liver pulse, for instance — say metal conquers wood: we call it the thief pathogen (zei xie). Among the five pathogens, the thief pathogen is the more severe condition. The five viscera mutually generate and mutually conquer each other, with balanced strength; when metal goes to conquer wood, that is the thief pathogen being severe. In simple terms: you feel the liver’s pulse position and actually feel the lung’s pulse. In spring, the face should carry a little green; if instead the person is deathly pale — the pulse and color do not match the season.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: By the same reasoning: normally the heart’s face color is red and its pulse is flooding. But at the heart’s pulse position you feel a relaxed pulse (huan) — the spleen’s pulse — that is the mother coming to generate the child, a mutual-generation state: the spleen is influencing the heart. If the heart itself is ill and the red is too great, that is the upright pathogen (zheng xie). For example, in summer the face should be rather red; if you find the patient is yellow; and feeling the heart pulse in summer, which should be its proper pulse (flooding), you instead feel a relaxed pulse — it means the spleen is influencing the heart, feeding back into the heart. And so on — these are the deficiency pathogen, the excess pathogen, the upright pathogen and the thief pathogen — the five pathogens we discussed before. Basically, what Qi Bo answers the Yellow Emperor is: if you only know the complexion and the pulse, you can already see patients and be a very good doctor, and you will absolutely never misdiagnose.

How did middle antiquity treat disease? Ten days of medicinal soup to remove the eight winds and five bi

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Page 98: in middle antiquity, when disease was treated, they treated when it arrived (zhi er zhi zhi) — wait until the illness comes, until it breaks out, and then act. Give him ten days of medicinal soup (tang ye), and it can remove the diseases of the eight winds and five bi. If ten days are not enough — if ten days cannot complete the course — then use cao su and cao gai: cao su is the stems and leaves of plants, cao gai is the roots of plants — along with rhizomes and fruits.

The medicinal soup is used both externally and internally:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: External washing is used in several situations. First, the disease is right on the skin — skin disease, itching, and so on. Second, when the soup cannot enter — the patient can no longer drink: after the herbs are boiled, the medicinal qi keeps rising; have the patient inhale it through the nose, letting the medicinal qi penetrate through the skin pores. Third, when there is a cut or wound, you can also wash it externally. For internal use we also use the soup, combining the two methods. So first drink the soup for ten days; if not cured, then use the soup and the external washing together.

The present age does not do it this way — a hundred patients in one morning

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The treatment of the present age is not like this (jin shi zhi zhi bing ye ze bu ran): they do not treat disease according to the law of the four seasons’ growth and storage, pay no attention to the waxing and waning of sun and moon, and do not carefully examine the patient’s daily life and living conditions — the illness is delayed again and again, and at that point you still use acupuncture on the outside and attack with drugs inside — this makes the consequences even more severe. So when Chinese medicine treats disease it is always very certain: only after looking, listening, asking and feeling (wang wen wen qie) are all done very clearly do we act; we do not attack casually. Now, most of those who do not treat according to the four seasons’ growth and storage, do not care about the waxing and waning of yin and yang, and do not examine the patient’s daily life — are Western doctors. Look: they see a hundred patients in one morning, one minute per patient — would they ask about your living conditions?

And how does Doctor Ni himself see patients?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: I often ask the patient: the patient comes in looking very worried, and I say — have you had something on your mind lately? He says constipation — I say, it came from worry, right? Worry and anger — constipation is then very easy to treat. Things like that: ask a little, but ask with skill. You cannot ask: “I came to see you about my illness — why are you asking about my marriage?” Asking must be skillful; we will come back to it later.

The great rule of treatment: never lose the complexion and pulse — discard the old and take up the new

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Page 99, Qi Bo says: the supreme point of treatment is never to lose the complexion and pulse (zhi zhi yao ji, wu shi se mai) — the most important thing in treating disease is absolutely not to lose the diagnosis of complexion and pulse; use them without confusion — that is the great rule of treatment; reversing the order and going against the flow, root and branch not matched — you lose the spirit and lose the state (ni cong dao xing, biao ben bu de, wang shen shi guo); discard the old and take up the new, and you become a true person (qu gu jiu xin, nai de zhen ren). This is the great essential of treatment. The patient tells you a great deal about his condition, talks on and on — but you still must not forget the complexion and the pulse. You cannot let the patient’s endless talking make you remember the complaints very clearly while you forget to look at the complexion and feel the pulse. So we must delete the incorrect medicine and keep the good.

The Yellow Emperor asks again: can the method of observing life and death be explained more briefly, just through the complexion and pulse? Qi Bo answers: base it on the single word “one” — what is “one”? It is looking at the patient’s spirit. In inspection, when your eyes pass over him — is there spirit or no spirit? If there is spirit, the disease is easy to treat; if there is no spirit, it is hard to treat.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: And some people are normal, without disease, and their eyes are spiritless — that is not disease; that is stupidity. Look: his eyes are dull, seemingly without spirit — this is foolishness, not illness. So we distinguish the “omen color” (zai se) from the “morbid color” (bing se); you must tell them apart. How do you inspect the spirit? Qi Bo says: when you examine a patient, stay in the sickroom with him, close the doors and windows — look at the patient without other influences, and protect his privacy. Some things the patient is embarrassed to say in front of others: if you are seeing him and a crowd sits beside you, he will never tell you the truth, and you cannot cure him. You must go into a small room — the ancients already set this rule. When we go to the hospital now it is different: the nurse is beside you, a crowd of students behind you — how can he talk? Only when it is just you and the doctor in the room can he speak. To obtain the spirit — besides inspecting the spirit, to truly know how the disease is developing you must give the patient the chance to tell you everything, item by item; only then can you cure him.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Of course there must be some skill. An old lady lives alone at home, her children are not around, she is very bored, goes a whole day without speaking to anyone — she comes to see you and sits down; you ask: how are your bowels? “Oh wonderful — I am eighty-five this year, and I remember ever since I first married at twenty I have been constipated…” You are eighty-five now, and you are telling me about sixty-five years ago? And you are too embarrassed to stop her — so you say: then tell me, yesterday? No? And today? Have you been constipated today? Good — done. Sometimes the patient cannot get to the point; when you are at the bedside you must have patience. If it really does not work and the patient keeps saying “my doctor says, my doctor says,” talking on and on without hearing you — I want to hear what YOU say, right? Tell me how you feel. He is still talking at the second question — the third question gets the answer. You cannot say “your doctor is toxic blood” — when you need to stop him, remember: no third party. That is Qi Bo’s meaning: you can scold him all you like, the door is closed, nobody sees. Only like this can you obtain the spirit.

The Tang Ye Liao Li Lun: why must wine be made with glutinous rice?

Page 102, we enter chapter fourteen, the Tang Ye Liao Li Lun (On Soups, Wines and Fermented Drinks) — lao li means wine. The Yellow Emperor asks: making the five grains into soups and fermenting them into wine — which grain is best?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Qi Bo says: cook with rice (yi dao mi wei chui) — for making soups and fermenting wine, rice is best; rice is complete (dao mi zhe wan). For the fire, use rice straw — rice straw is firm (dao xin zhe jian). The “rice” here is the round grain (jing mi) — actually what we call glutinous rice; it is sweeter, and for fermenting wine, glutinous rice is best. Why rice? Because rice receives the harmony of heaven and earth and the fitting of high and low, so it is able to be complete in itself (de tian di zhi he, gao xia zhi yi, gu neng zi wan); it is harvested in its season, so it is able to be firm (fa qu de shi, gu neng zi jian). Look at rice: spring growth, summer flourishing, autumn harvest, winter storage — it follows the seasons completely.

Bonus: seeing things by their “image” — the rice awn is short, the wheat awn is long

Doctor Ni borrows this passage to teach an advanced principle of choosing herbs in Chinese medicine — the “image” (xiang):

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In the Yi Jing (Book of Changes), the hardest things to understand are the “image” (xiang) and the “number” (shu). If we use the image to look at real things — not form, color, qi or flavor. Normally, when we select Chinese herbs we choose by form, color, qi and flavor. But if you use the image: the awn of the rice husk is that short — do you know how long the awn of wheat is? The awn of wheat is longer. Easterners have short body hair; westerners are hairy all over — when they take off their clothes they look like a black gorilla. I once treated a westerner; when he took off his clothes, I looked — he was a black gorilla all over!

Doctor Ni closes with one sentence that strikes the theme:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Whether you look at rice or wheat, observe things by their image — then you understand the principle heaven and earth give to all things. The use of herbs and the treatment of disease in Chinese medicine all derive from this — understand this “image,” and when you read the later chapters of the Huang Di Nei Jing, everything flows smoothly.

Based on Doctor Ni Haixia’s Ren Ji (Human Records) lecture series on the Huang Di Nei Jing (Eighteenth lecture)