Chinese lesson: wu wei & jing wei
Chapter 8 of the Suwen, the first part of the Inner Classic of the Yellow Emperor, lists the functions of the zangfu. Of the spleen and stomach it says: ‘Spleen and stomach are in charge of storehouses and granaries (cang lin 倉 廩); the five tastes (wu wei 五 味) are derived from them’.
The term ‘storehouses and granaries’ suggests a place, or function, where nourishment is received, stored and distributed. (In classical Chinese there would be no distinction between the verb to store and a place of storage.) In classical texts the stomach is often called the great storehouse – da cang 大 倉.
The spleen and stomach are the only zangfu couple mentioned together in this chapter – a reflection of their interdependence and close working relationship in the dual function of receiving and distributing. They provide a great example of yang and yin interplay – the zang function of storing and transforming, the fu of receiving and transporting.
The five tastes – wu wei 五 味 – are the result of that process. And once transformed into the subtle essences of food – jing wei 精 微 – and sorted appropriately into the sour, bitter, sweet, pungent and salty tastes, they are distributed to the five zang – liver, heart, spleen, lung and kidneys.
The ‘taste’ of food is so much more than what may be described simply as flavour. The chemistry of each substance defines the taste and provides this affinity with certain functions of the body. These are described, as is so often the case in Chinese medicine, by the action of their qi.
Because there are five tastes, we know that they have an affinity with the five elements/phases – wu xing 五 行 – which is made according to the kind of qi they provide once they are broken down and assimilated; the sour taste contracting, the pungent expanding; the bitter clearing, the salty drawing together and holding down; the sweet harmonising and blending.
The jing 精 of jing wei we know well as ‘essence’, and the character is made with the bursting grain on the left, and that of qing 青 – the green colour associated with new growth and transformation in the spring – on the right. Wei 微 is a beautiful character, which has the meaning of the most subtle, tenuous, indiscernible, intangible – etymologically, it suggests a stripping away, peeling back to the most inner part of a plant. In Daoism it is often used to describe that which exists between the wu – 無 nothingness – and you – 有 being-ness.
It is this state between the energetic and the material, being and non-being, which allows the essences of the five tastes to be absorbed, assimilated and metabolised – to be transformed from something that is ‘not me’ to being part of my own blood and qi. In the words of Claude Larre: ‘It is in that place where nothing can be seen, that the operation of life is taking place’.
