Face Regions
Travel Palace
Palace
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Origin 1465 to 1620
The Travel Palace, or qian yi gong, is one of the twelve palaces of mian xiang, read from the temples at the outer edge of the forehead beside each eyebrow. It is read as the seat of fortune in travel and relocation, whether journeys are likely to go smoothly or bring difficulty, and by extension a person's fortune away from home. Full, smooth temples are read as a sign of safe and beneficial travel, while sunken, discoloured or heavily lined temples are traditionally read as a caution against travel at that time. As with the rest of mian xiang, this is a traditional interpretive practice, not a finding of medical science.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodFixed in its present form by the Shenxiang quanbian, the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644) compilation Livia Kohn describes as the most complete and most widely available textbook of Chinese physiognomy, though face reading as a practice in China is attested centuries earlier. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerThe twelve palaces are part of the classical apparatus of Chinese face reading set out in the Shenxiang quanbian, described by Livia Kohn as the most complete and most widely available textbook of Chinese physiognomy, dated to the Ming dynasty, between 1465 and 1620, and drawing on earlier surviving material. 1 Origin of the NameGong, palace, is the term shared by all twelve areas in this scheme, casting each life domain as its own precinct of an imperial court mapped onto the face; the same architectural metaphor names the three courts and organizes mian xiang's reading of the whole head. 1 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryLargely abandoned as a comparative category 1 Learn More
Fortune Read Into the Temples Before Every Journey
The Travel Palace, qian yi gong, read from the temples at the outer edge of the forehead beside each eyebrow, covers a category of fortune that would have carried real weight in the world that produced the Shenxiang quanbian. Travel in Ming China was neither casual nor safe by default, a merchant's journey, an official's relocation to a new post or a scholar's trip to sit a provincial examination each carried genuine risk from banditry, disease and simple distance, and a palace specifically devoted to reading whether a coming journey was likely to go well answered a practical concern rather than an abstract one. Full, smooth temples are read as a sign of safe and beneficial travel, while sunken, discoloured or heavily lined temples are read as a caution against travel at that particular time.
Contemporary practitioners have carried the palace forward largely unchanged, since travel and relocation remain recognizable concerns even though their risks have shifted from banditry and disease toward the more mundane hazards of modern transit, one of the more direct continuities in a system that has reinterpreted several of its other palaces, the Servants Palace among them, more substantially to match a changed society.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
One of the Twelve Palaces (shier gong), the facial zones each mapped to a specific life domain in Chinese physiognomy.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.