Origin 1465 to 1620
The Earth Face Shape, or tu xing lian, is one of the five element, wu xing, face shapes of mian xiang. It is described as broad, thick and squared, with a wide jaw and full, heavy features across a face roughly as wide as it is long, echoing earth's traditional association with solidity and support. Practitioners read this shape as belonging to someone steady, reliable and patient, matching earth's traditional qualities within the five phase system. As with the rest of mian xiang, this is a traditional interpretive practice, not a finding of medical science.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodTraced by Livia Kohn to Chen Tuan, the tenth century Taoist credited as a founder of Chinese physiognomy and traditionally taught by the legendary Hemp Robed Master, with the five shape scheme reaching its classical statement well before the Ming dynasty compilations that fix the twelve palaces. 2 Attributed Author / CompilerThe five element classification of face shapes belongs to the same classical apparatus, traced by Livia Kohn to Chen Tuan, the tenth century Taoist credited as a founder of Chinese physiognomy and traditionally taught by the legendary Hemp Robed Master, whose name the tradition also carries as the title of an older manual, the Ma Yi Shen Xiang. The fullest surviving compendium of this whole apparatus, the Shenxiang quanbian, is dated to the Ming dynasty. 2 Origin of the NameXing lian pairs xing, phase or element, with lian, face, following the same wu xing five phase vocabulary used throughout Chinese correlative cosmology for organs, seasons, directions and now facial morphology. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryLargely abandoned as a comparative category 2 Learn More
The Squared Shape at the Center of the Five Phases
Earth occupies a distinct structural position within the five phase system that the other four elements, arranged around it, do not share: where wood, fire, metal and water form a cycle each generating the next in sequence, earth traditionally sits at the center of the arrangement, the phase the other four pass through or rest upon rather than simply one more link in the chain. The Earth Face Shape, tu xing lian, described as broad, thick and squared, with a wide jaw and full, heavy features across a face roughly as wide as it is long, reflects that centrality in visual terms, a shape read as solid and settled rather than pointed or elongated the way the wood or fire shapes are.
Practitioners read this shape as belonging to someone steady, reliable and patient, qualities that match earth's own traditional association with solidity and support across the wider five phase framework, in medicine where the earth phase governs digestion and nourishment, and in astrology where it governs stability and endurance. The Earth Face Shape's own reading in mian xiang is therefore not an isolated physiognomic judgment about jaw width, it is one more application of a single, much older account of what earth as an element is held to mean wherever the five phase system appears.
Connections
Associated With
Source Mirror of Auras: Chen Tuan on PhysiognomyLivia Kohn
Belongs to Tradition
One of the Five Element face shapes (wuxing), classifying overall face form by the Chinese five element correspondence system.
Source A Textbook of Physiognomy: The Tradition of the Shenxiang quanbianLivia Kohn
Sources
1. A Textbook of Physiognomy: The Tradition of the Shenxiang quanbian
Livia Kohn, Asian Folklore Studies, 1986the Ming dynasty dating of the Shenxiang quanbian, 1465 to 1620
2. Mirror of Auras: Chen Tuan on Physiognomy
Livia Kohn, Asian Folklore Studies, 1988Kohn 1988, p. 223, section 2, the earth correspondence (coarse, solid looks, caution)
correspondences are given between "metal" and angular appearance, "wood" and slimness, "water" and obesity, "fire" and sharply-cut features, "earth" and coarse, solid looks. In addition certain psychological dispositions are associated with the five types. They are in the above order: deep resolution, wealth, literary talent, courage, and caution.
- Associated With: Earth
View the Source Targeting the Readership for a Ming Publication: Comprehensiveness in the Compendium for the Expert Physiognomist
Mei Chun, Asia Major, 2016the compendium's construction and its attribution to Chen Tuan and the Hemp Robed MasterView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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.