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Concept
Qi
Summary
In traditional Chinese culture and the East Asian cultural sphere, qi, also ch'i in Wade–Giles romanization (ˈtʃiː ) or chi, is believed to be a vital force forming part of any living entity. Literally meaning "vapor", "air", or "breath", the word qi is a polysemous word often translated as "vital energy", "vital force", "material energy", or simply as "energy". Qi is the central underlying principle in traditional Chinese medicine and in Chinese martial arts. The practice of cultivating and balancing qi is called qigong.
Believers in qi describe it as a vital force, the flow of which must be unimpeded for health. Qi is a pseudoscientific, unverified concept, and is unrelated to the concept of energy used in science (vital energy itself being an abandoned scientific notion). The historian of medicine in China Paul U. Unschuld adds that there "is no evidence of a concept of 'energy' – either in the strictly physical sense or even in the more colloquial sense – anywhere in Chinese medical theory."
Gods, especially anthropromorphic gods, are sometimes thought to have qi and be a reflection of the microcosm of qi in humans, both having qi that can concentrate in certain body parts.
The cultural keyword qì is analyzable in terms of Chinese and Sino-Xenic pronunciations. Possible etymologies include the logographs 氣, 气, and 気 with various meanings ranging from "vapor" to "anger", and the English loanword qi or ch'i.
The logograph 氣 is read with two Chinese pronunciations, the usual qì 氣 "air; vital energy" and the rare archaic xì 氣 "to present food" (later disambiguated with 餼). Hackett Publishing Company, Philip J. Ivanhoe, and Bryan W. Van Norden theorize that the word qi possibly came from a term that referred to "the mist that arose from heated sacrificial offerings".
Pronunciations of 氣 in modern varieties of Chinese with standardized IPA equivalents include: Standard Chinese qì /t͡ɕhi˥˩/, Wu Chinese qi /t͡ɕhi˧˦/, Southern Min khì /khi˨˩/, Eastern Min ké /khɛi˨˩˧/, Standard Cantonese hei3 /hei̯˧/, and Hakka Chinese hi /hi˥/.
Official source
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