Wuxing (Wu-hsing)

The Chinese term wuxing (wu-hsing, “five processes” or “five phases”) refers to a
fivefold conceptual scheme that is found throughout traditional Chinese thought. These
five phases are wood (mu), fire (huo), earth (tu), metal (jin), and water (shui); they are
regarded as dynamic, interdependent modes or aspects of the universe’s ongoing
existence and development. Although this fivefold scheme resembles ancient Greek
discourse about the four elements, these Chinese “phases” are seen as ever-changing
material forces, while the Greek elements typically are regarded as unchanging building
blocks of matter. Prior to the Han dynasty, wuxing functioned less as a school of
thought and more as a way of describing natural processes hidden from ordinary view.
During the period of the Han dynasty (202 B.C.E.-220 C.E.), wuxing thought became a
distinct philosophical tradition (jia, “family” or “school”). Since that time,
the wuxing system has been applied to the explanation of natural phenomena and
extended to the description of aesthetic principles, historical events, political structures,
and social norms, among other things. Cosmology, morality, and medicine remain the
chief arenas of wuxing thought, but virtually every aspect of Chinese life has been
touched by it. As such, wuxing has come to be inseparable from Chineseness itself and
belongs to no single stream of classical Chinese philosophy.

1. Meanings of Wuxing
When seeking to understand the wuxing system, we encounter multiple uses of this term
in pre-Han and Han sources that may signal the need for more than one translation from
Chinese into any differing target language. We may ask, are we speaking about five
elements, five phases, five movements, five actions, or something altogether different? The
truth is that, depending on the use and context, any one of these might be an appropriate
translation.
It has become routine in recent decades to insist that, in its cosmological
uses, wuxing should be rendered into English as “five phases” rather than “five elements”,
and to make a deliberate distinction between the role of these five in Chinese cosmology
and the notion of the four elements in Greek thought, according to which the Greek notions
of earth, air, fire, water are generally thought to represent actual fixed material substances.
Sometimes wuxing has been translated into English as “five elements”, but when we
actually watch the work that xing does in the Chinese language, it is used to describe
movement (e.g. walking), alteration, changing states of being, permutations or
metamorphoses. To back translate, then, the Chinese conception of “element” is quite
different from the Western one, in that it does not imply a fixed substantial essence that
remains unchanged and constitutes the discrete difference between one object and all
others. Whereas the four elements in Western Greek thought were understood as the basic
building blocks of matter, the Chinese, by contrast, viewed objects as ever-changing and
moving forces or energies of five sorts. These five phases work interactively and have
identifiable correlations that instantiate both objects and natural processes as we know
them.
2. Origins of Wuxing
Although not developed into its present form until the Han dynasty, the origins
of wuxing extend far back into the earliest records of Chinese intellectual history. In the
Shang dynasty (1600-1046 B.C.E.), oracle bone inscriptions (used in divination rituals to
predict and discern outcomes in nature and human affairs) rely on the number five.
Typically, this is the pattern of four around a center, where the four represent the cardinal
directions expressed in the territories around the central area in which the ruler resides and
from which he governs. But this pattern of five is not yet any comprehensive theory or
cosmology, and there is no evidence of belief that some five phases or elements
interpenetrate and mutually influence each other correlatively. However, there are already,
in very rough form, associations of the territories with directions, colors, spirits, and proper
rituals that are suggestive of the later correlational developments in Han wuxing thought.
For example, in the West an ox of a certain color must be sacrificed at a specified time of a
year in order to insure an auspicious future. Accordingly, even in the Shang there is
fragmentary evidence that the number five is of explanatory significance, and there is some
preliminary correlative association between territories, colors, rituals, and deities.
3. Wuxing Before the Han Dynasty
Between the Shang and Han dynasties, a number of texts were compiled that collectively
shed light on the development of what became wuxing thought. Chief among these are
some of the “Five Classics” alleged to have been written during the Zhou dynasty (1045-256
B.C.E.) and later enshrined as the earliest Confucian canon, although portions of some or
all of these texts may well reflect the concerns and contexts of later rather than earlier
periods: Shijing (Classic of Poetry),Shujing (Classic of History), Liji (Record of
Ritual), Yijing (Classic of Changes), and Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals) with
its commentary, Zuozhuan (Chronicles of Zuo). Despite the uncertain dating, it can be
assumed that these texts contain a substantial amount of material that is traceable to the
pre-Qin (pre-221 B.C.E.) period and even reaching back to Confucius’s era or before.
In Zuo Zhuan’s record on the 27th year of the reign of Duke Xiang (590-573 B.C.E.), the
text says: “Heaven has produced the five elements which supply humankind’s
requirements, and the people use them all. Not one of them can be dispensed with.”
Although English translations of this passage usually say “five elements” and we would
expect the Chinese text to say wuxing, actually the text uses wu cai (“five materials” as in
“raw materials”). Accordingly, we may have here good evidence for the antiquity of this
passage, because there is no reformatting of the passage to use the character xing as later
scholars (who edited these texts into their final form) interested in fostering
the wuxing cosmology might have been presumed to have done. The text is saying that life
depends on the ability of the people to understand and use the five raw materials of reality,
but it is probably not drawing any significant distinction between xing and cai.
In the 7th year of the reign of Duke Wen (626-609 B.C.E.), the text says: “Water, fire, metal,
wood, earth, and grains are called the six natural resources (or treasures) (liu fu).” The
character fu is used for the treasures of nature; the natural resources for life. This list of six
such resources contains the wuxing as we see them in later works, but with the addition of
the grains. Again, we might infer that the text may record authentically pre-Han material
and it may reflect rather accurately the fact that the pattern of five as the number of
elements had not yet been firmly established in the time of the Zuo Zhuan.
In its remarks on Duke Zhao, 1 st year, the Zuo Zhuan says Heaven generates the five tastes
(wu wei- sour, sweet, salty, bitter and acrid), five colors (wu se - green, yellow, black, red,
and white), and five sounds (wu sheng – corresponding to the Western musical
tones mi, so, do, re, and la). In the passage on Duke Zhao’s 25 th year, tastes, colors, and
sounds are a result of the wuxing. The wuxing are understood as expressions of Heaven’s
patterns (jing), and the character for patterns is the same one later used for the qi (vital
energy) meridian lines in the body traced by practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine,
suggesting that the wuxing are to Heaven as the qi meridians are to our bodies.
The Zuo Zhuan does not provide an account of correlation and intermingling of the five
elements such as we see in later works. Instead, it puts forward a teaching about five
officials (wu guan) who exercise their will in order to arrange the xing into phenomenal
reality. In the material on the Duke of Zhao’s 29 th year, the striking question is posed, “Why
are there no more dragons?” The answer provided for the absence of dragons is that each
element is directed by its own official, but if the official neglects his task or the persons on
earth distort or mismanage the five elements which are the patterns of earth, animals that
depend on the order of these patterns will hide and stop reproducing correctly. The species
will disappear. These officials are presented as spirits or deities which require veneration
and offerings to be made to them. The text gives the name of each official and the element
over which he has charge.
The Shujing is a collection of documentary materials related to the ancient history of
China. The fragments that survive are a mixture of myth and history. The earliest five
chapters reach back to the legendary sage emperors Yao and Shun (c. 2400 B.C.E.?), and
the last 32 chapters cover the period of the Zhou dynasty down to Duke Mu of Qin (r. 660-
621 B.C.E.). In this work, the chapter entitled Hong Fan (“Comprehensive Order” or “The
Order of Everything”) provides an account of how society should follow the patterns of
Earth and Heaven. The first of the nine sections of this chapter is devoted to
the wuxing system, indicating that it must be understood before the remaining eight
sections can be grasped. The chapter is constructed in the style of a dialogue between Wu
Wang and a sage. Wu states that he knows human society and that government and
relationships must follow the patterns of Heaven, but he wonders how to fully grasp these
patterns. The sage tells him that whenever the wuxing are in disorder, the constant norms
of Heaven will disappear and chaos will follow.
We notice now that human behavior can contribute to the harmonious operation of nature,
or disrupt it causing chaos and disorder. The moral patterns for humanity and those of the
natural cosmos are all interconnected and correlated. For the first time, each of the
elements has its nature more fully explained: water moistens and descends (run xia); fire
burns and ascends (yan shang); wood bends and straightens (qu zhi); metal yields and
changes (cong ge); earth receives and gives (jia se), such as through seeds and crops.
While fire and water are presented as opposites, wood and metal are not. Perhaps more
interestingly, we notice the correlational mechanisms of the system becoming more
obvious. The five elements are tied to the five tastes: that which moistens and descends
produces saltiness; that which burns and ascends produces bitterness; that which bends
and straightens produces sourness; that which yields and changes produces pungency; that
which seeds and gives crops produces sweetness. The five elements are correlated to the
five ways or powers of a human being: appearance, speech, sight, hearing, and thinking.
Hong Fan does not spell out how the correlations work, only that they exist. Likewise, in
sections two and eight of this chapter, the five elements and the five conducts (also
called wuxing) are related. The sections say that if humans do not behave in the proper
manner, they throw the five elements out of harmonious operation, illness and weakness
arise in the body and disorder shows up in nature and the human world of history. But the
chapter does not make a direct correlation to explain how an individual element produces
an action, as it does when commenting on the five tastes. Still, the obvious point of a
chapter entitled “The Order of Everything” is that a ruler who is not able to order these
processes will throw all things into chaos, and even the rains will not come on time.
In Liji, the number of five-set processes of arrangement and change is sixty-two. These are
used as explanations for matters including not only politics, family, and medicine, but
colors, seasons, plants, planets, and rituals for performing various actions. Consider that in
wearing ritual vestments of green and eating from vessels of wood (not metal), the
sovereign could promote the powers of spring because the associations of the wuxing with
various correlates sometimes make some sense (wood, green, spring; or fire, red, summer).
Later, during the Warring States period (403-221 B.C.E.), there is evidence of intellectual
activity that explicitly concerned wuxing thought as a comprehensive system. According to
the Records of the Historian by Sima Qian (145–90 B.C.E.), beginning in the reign of
King Wei (358–320 B.C.E.) and continuing during the reign of King Xuan (319–309
B.C.E.), an intellectual exchange was fostered by convening scholars in the capital city of
Linzi next to the Ji Gate, which gave its name to what became known as the Jixia Academy.
Figures named as master teachers in this place include Zou Yan (305–240 B.C.E.), who is
considered the systematizer of wuxing cosmology; Zhuang Zhou (Zhuangzi, c. 365–290
B.C.E.), an early Daoist thinker; and both Mengzi (“Mencius,” c. 372–289 B.C.E.)
and Xunzi (Hsün-tzu, c. 310-220 B.C.E.), who are among the first interpreters
of Confucius’s thought. If all this is taken as accurate, it is possible that the careers of
Mengzi, Zhuang Zhou and Zou Yan could have overlapped at Jixia, and Xunzi might have
been there at the same time as a young student before later returning as a master himself.
We are likely on safe ground in concluding that wuxing thought was a subject of the
exchanges and debates of figures at Jixia. There are passages even in the so-called “Inner
Chapters” of the Zhuangzi which seem to have wuxing cosmological assumptions
underlying them (for example, chapters 2, 6, and 7).
Xunzi is very critical of wuxing explanations and the teachers who are using “ancient lore”
to “concoct their new theory” called wuxing. He calls the theory perverse and bizarre and
characterizes it as obscure and impenetrable nonsense. He is particularly critical of the
stream of Confucian thought, found in the tradition of Mengzi, which has appropriated
these ideas but is oblivious to where it all goes wildly wrong (Xunzi 16/6/10; Ames and
Hall, pp. 137-38). Xunzi is not making a distinction between wuxing as a cosmological
theory and wuxing as a moral doctrine, evidence of which may be seen in the Wuxing
pian (Five Modes of Proper Conduct), a text discovered in the tomb of “the tutor of the
Eastern palace” at Guodian in China’s Hubei province in 1993, which dates to 300 B.C.E..
Despite Xunzi’s criticims, a wuxing system was growing and extending itself from
cosmology to morality, aesthetics, medicine, and so forth.
4. Wuxing During the Han Dynasty and After
During the Han dynasty, one of the most fundamental texts containing material
on wuxing theory was the Huainanzi (The Masters of Huainan, 139 B.C.E.). This text
says: “The natural qualities of Heaven and Earth do not exceed five. The sage is able to
use wuxing correctly in order to govern without waste.” The Huainanzi shows the move
to standardize the number five. It continues to draw out the correlations
between wuxing in cosmology and morality, and it extends the medical implications of the
system. Sages who know what to do with the wuxing are able to rule the country, heal
patients, and manage the transformations of life and longevity. It seems that this text
conflates Daoist notions of immortals (xian) with those who possess the skill necessary to
master the five elements.
Han thinkers used the system to account for an ordered sequence or cycle of change. For
example, in the “mutual production” (xiangsheng) series, wood produced fire, fire
produced earth, earth produced metal, metal produced water, and water produced wood.
In the “mutual conquest” (xiangke) series, wood conquered earth, metal conquered wood,
fire conquered metal, water conquered fire, and earth conquered water. If a ruling
dynasty’s emblem was water, one might anticipate it being overcome by a dynasty whose
emblem was earth. This schema was appropriated as the Han was thought to rule under
the red phase of fire, and their most formidable revolutionary challengers employed this
ideology in constructing their movement and its symbols, such as the rebel movement
known as the Yellow Turbans (184 C.E.), which attempted to exploit the ideas that red
would be conquered by yellow and fire by water.
Although most of its ideas are already evident in the Huainanzi, the Chunqiu
fanlu (Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals) traditionally ascribed to
Dong Zhongshu (179-104 B.C.E.), is a sustained effort to incorporate the wuxing system
into Confucian thought, even connecting it to the Confucian five relationships of filiality.
This application was continued in the work of Yang Xiong (53 B.C.E.-18 C.E.), whose
text Tai Xuan (The Supreme Mystery, c. 2 B.C.E.) represents an example of Confucian
syncretism and appropriation of the wuxing cosmology. In Baihu
tongyi(Comprehensive Discussions in White Tiger Hall, c. 80 C.E.), the record of
state-sponsored debates held in 58 C.E., the following explanation for the way a mature son
should remain with his parents while a daughter should leave home is given: “The son not
leaving his parents models himself on what? He models himself on fire that does not
depart from wood. The daughter leaving her parents models herself on what? She models
herself on water which by flowing departs from metal.”
Not all Confucian thinkers accepted the wuxing cosmology or its extended explanatory
devices, however. Wang Chong (27-100 C.E.) was a critic of the theory in its broadest
forms, and of the application of it in the realms of natural and physical phenomena,
morality, and political history. In his Critical Essays (Lunheng), he used argument,
sarcasm, and what we would call empirical evidence, to criticize the work of Dong
Zhongshu and attempt to debunk the evidential basis for the wuxing system.
By the first century B.C.E., Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic),
arguably the most significant of the classical Chinese documents on wuxing as related to
medicine, attained its final form. It most likely developed in a lineage of teachers
associated with what is now called Huang-Lao (“Yellow Emperor-Laozi”) Daoism, which
also influenced portions of the Zhuangzi. The work has two parts. The first is
the Suwen (Basic Questions), devoted to the wuxing foundation of Chinese medicine
and the diagnostic methods for ailments, and the second is the Lingshu (Spiritual Pivots),
 which is largely concerned with very technical and thorough explanations of acupuncture.
Lingshu 24 has the Yellow Emperor say that the qi energy meridians of the body (jing
mai) are divided according to the wuxing and these lines convey energy to the five organs
(wu zang) of the body. The Suwen relies largely on the “mutual conquest” series as the
preferred explanatory language for medical ailments and their remedies. In thinking of
the wuxing system related to the body, we must always remember that, in traditional
Chinese thought, the body is a microcosm of the universe that recapitulates the patterns of
the macrocosm (i.e. Heaven and Earth). A disease considered energetic or fiery could be
overcome by a medicine correlated with cooling associated with water. Likewise, since
wood xing suffuses throughout the spleen and also gives rise to sour flavor, then eating
sour foods will increase the wood internally and strengthen the spleen. Wood is also
correlated with the color blue-green, the spring season, the direction east, and the musical
note jue (Western mi), and can be increased or conquered based on these correlations.
Medical understandings of wuxing have been applied to non-philosophical arenas, such as
astrology. Chinese astrology relies heavily upon wuxing notions. Each astrological or
zodiac sign is ruled by one or more of the five elements and its yin or yang energies.
According to the lore of Chinese astrology, the signs and energies we are born under impact
our entire lives and our personalities. For example, being born under the wood sign means
one is influenced by yang energy. Such a person is said to be strong and self-reliant. He is
associated with the East, the astrological signs of the Tiger, Rabbit, and Dragon, and the
spring season; his health is governed by the condition of his liver and gallbladder; and he
both favors and prospers under the colors blue and green. Similar explanations and
prognostications are given for the other four of the five xing as well.
Both military and literary texts in traditional China have incorporated the wuxing system.
The Liu Tao (Six Strategies, also known as Tai Gong’s Six Strategies [for conducting
war]), is a well-known tactical manual of ancient China. It asserts that, by knowing the
enemy’s posture with respect to wuxing, one can then, through the “mutual conquest”
series, know how to select the attacking phase to defeat him. Novels such as Xiyou
ji (Journey to the West, 16th century C.E.) present main characters in five-phase terms,
and the structure of Hong Lou Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber, 18th century
C.E.) may be described in terms of wuxing, as Andrew Plaks has shown.
Beyond the world of Chinese texts, traditional Chinese visual arts have embraced wuxing,
including the style of painting known by that very name. This style is a synthesis of
traditional landscape painting with wuxing cosmology. Wuxing painting has a total of
five brush strokes, five movements, and five types of composition, each corresponding to
the five elements. The goal of such painting is to create an image harmoniously balanced,
often depicting a landscape, but even when not doing so, nevertheless playing on the
connection between objects or directions and wuxing.
As wuxing thought has continued to become ever more labyrinthine, the five elements
have been incorporated into many arenas of Chinese life, from the way space is arranged
(fengshui) to the art of cooking (sweets, sours, bitters, etc). Having become a distinct
philosophical tradition (jia, “family” or “school”) during the Han, wuxing gradually
developed into a conceptual device that is used to explain not only cosmology, morality, and
medicine, but virtually every aspect of Chinese life and thought. As such, wuxing has come
to be inseparable from Chineseness itself and belongs to no single stream of classical
Chinese philosophy.
5. References and Further Reading
 Ames, Roger T. and David L. Hall, trans. Focusing the Familiar: A Translation and
Philosophical Interpretation of the Zhongyong. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001.
 Bodde, Derk. Chinese Thought, Society, and Science: The Intellectual and Social
Background of Science and Technology in Pre-Modern China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1991.
 Graham, A.C. Yin-Yang and the Nature of Correlative Thinking. IEAP Occasional Paper
and Monograph Series, No. 6. Singapore: Institute of East Asian Philosophies, 1986.
 Henderson, John. “Wuxing (Wu-hsing): Five Phases” in Antonio S. Cua,
ed. Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2003, 786-88.
 Major, John S., et. al., trans. The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of
Government in Early Han China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
 Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 2, History of Scientific
Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956.
 Plaks, Andrew H. Archetype and Allegory in the Dream of the Red Chamber.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976.
 Porkert, Manfred. The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine; Systems of
Correspondence. East Asian Science Series, Vol. 3. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974.
 Rochat de la Vallee, Elisabeth. Wuxing: The Five Elements in Classical Chinese Texts.
London: Monkey Press, 2009.

Author Information
Ronnie Littlejohn
Email: ronnie.littlejohn@belmont.edu
Belmont University
U. S. A.