Face Regions
Middle Court
Court
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Origin 1465 to 1620
The Middle Court, or zhong ting, is the second of the three courts, running from the eyebrows down to the base of the nose, and takes in the eyes, the cheekbones and the whole central block of the face. Mian xiang reads it as the record of a person's own effort in adulthood, roughly the years from thirty to fifty, covering career, self reliance and personal drive rather than what was inherited or what remains to come. A nose read as strong and well proportioned within this court is taken as a sign of sustained personal achievement through the middle of life. As with the rest of mian xiang, this is a traditional interpretive practice within a living tradition, not a finding of medical science.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodExamined by Xing Wang as part of the general apparatus of Chinese physiognomy, xiangshu, in Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644) China, an apparatus she traces to a tradition credited to the tenth century Taoist Chen Tuan. 2 Attributed Author / CompilerThe division of the face into three courts belongs to the general apparatus of Chinese physiognomy, xiangshu, examined in Xing Wang's history of body divination in Ming China. That apparatus descends from a tradition credited to the tenth century Taoist Chen Tuan, traditionally said to carry forward the teaching of the legendary Hemp Robed Master whose name is also given to an older manual, the Ma Yi Shen Xiang, and it survives in its fullest compiled form as the Shenxiang quanbian, dated to the Ming dynasty. 2 Origin of the NameTing, court, is the term shared by all three areas in this scheme, san ting, three courts, casting the face's vertical bands as the halls of an imperial court read in sequence for a life's early, middle and later years. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryLargely abandoned as a comparative category 2 Learn More
Where Every Reading of Adulthood Converges on the Nose
The Middle Court runs from the eyebrows to the base of the nose and claims the busiest stretch of real estate in the whole mian xiang system for a single court. The nose itself, read as both the Wealth Palace at its tip and wings and the Examiner Officer across its whole length, sits entirely inside the Middle Court's boundaries, as does the Health Palace at the bridge and the eyes themselves, read as the Supervisor Officer. No other court concentrates so many of the system's separate named readings into one span of face, a density that follows from what the Middle Court is held to describe, the years of adulthood roughly from thirty to fifty, when a reader would expect career, health, judgment and accumulated wealth to all be actively in play at once rather than settled by inheritance or deferred to old age.
The convergence is not treated in the tradition as redundant. A strong nose within a weak Middle Court, or a well formed Wealth Palace beside a poorly read Health Palace immediately next to it, gives a practitioner a finer grained reading than any single feature could on its own, since the courts, palaces and officers are read together as one layered system rather than as three separate face reading methods that happen to share a canvas.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
One of the Three Courts (santing), the horizontal division of the face read for early, middle and late life fortune in Chinese physiognomy.
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