This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Physiognomy in Ming China documents face reading as a real, socially consequential practice at the imperial court and beyond, with recognized practitioners consulted on matters as weighty as a candidate's fitness for office, evidence that the tradition's named face regions were treated as practically diagnostic rather than as abstract symbolism alone.
That documented social use matters for a face region entry because it shows a region's assigned meaning was not merely a scholar's private theory but a claim real historical actors acted on, and an entry records where the documented record shows a specific region actually being invoked in a real decision, alongside its stated textual meaning, as two connected but separate facts.
A face region entry therefore records both a region's stated meaning within the tradition's own manuals and, where the historical record preserves it, how that meaning was actually put to use, since the Ming court evidence shows physiognomy functioned as an applied practice with real documented consequences rather than only a closed textual system. That same distinction, a stated meaning and its documented practical use, is worth checking for any face region the atlas records.