Face Regions
Wealth Palace
Palace
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Origin 1465 to 1620
The Wealth Palace, or cai bo gong, is one of the twelve palaces of mian xiang, made up of the tip of the nose and its two wings, the nostrils. It is read as the seat of a person's capacity to accumulate and hold onto money, distinct from the Career Palace's reading of rank and advancement. A full, fleshy nose tip with wings that curve inward rather than flare, so the nostrils are not too visible from the front, is read as a sign of good judgment about money and steady accumulation of it, while a thin, sharp or bony nose tip is read as a caution about money slipping away. 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
Money in Hand, Kept Apart From Rank and From Land
Mian xiang draws a three way distinction in how it reads material fortune that a reader unfamiliar with the system might expect to be collapsed into one general reading of wealth. The Wealth Palace, cai bo gong, covers money in hand, liquid accumulation a person can actually spend, read from the tip of the nose and its two wings, the nostrils. The Career Palace, by contrast, covers rank, promotion and public standing rather than money, read from the forehead's center. And the Property Palace covers fixed holdings, land and housing, read from the upper eyelid. A person could in principle be read as strong in one of the three and weak in the other two, since the system treats these as genuinely separate fortunes rather than three windows onto one underlying prosperity.
The specific reading at the Wealth Palace, a full, fleshy nose tip with wings curving inward so the nostrils are not too visible from the front, is read as good judgment about money and steady accumulation of it, while a thin or bony nose tip is read as a caution about money slipping away. The nose tip's shared location with the Examiner Officer, one of the five officers read across the whole nose, means a Wealth Palace reading never stands entirely alone but sits inside a second, broader reading of the same feature.
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.
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