Face Regions
Siblings Palace
Palace
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Origin 1465 to 1620
The Siblings Palace, or xiongdi gong, is one of the twelve palaces of mian xiang, read from the eyebrows themselves rather than from any single point. It covers relationships with brothers, sisters and close peers, and by extension a person's capacity for friendship and cooperation with others near their own age. Eyebrows read as long, well shaped and evenly arched are taken as a sign of harmonious sibling relationships and a wide circle of loyal friends, while thin, broken or badly shaped eyebrows are read as friction or distance from siblings and peers. As with the rest of mian xiang, this is a traditional interpretive practice, not a finding of medical science.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodFixed in its present form by the Shenxiang quanbian, the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644) compilation Livia Kohn describes as the most complete and most widely available textbook of Chinese physiognomy, though face reading as a practice in China is attested centuries earlier. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerThe twelve palaces are part of the classical apparatus of Chinese face reading set out in the Shenxiang quanbian, described by Livia Kohn as the most complete and most widely available textbook of Chinese physiognomy, dated to the Ming dynasty, between 1465 and 1620, and drawing on earlier surviving material. 1 Origin of the NameGong, palace, is the term shared by all twelve areas in this scheme, casting each life domain as its own precinct of an imperial court mapped onto the face; the same architectural metaphor names the three courts and organizes mian xiang's reading of the whole head. 1 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryLargely abandoned as a comparative category 1 Learn More
One Feature Serving as Both a Palace and an Officer
The eyebrows do double duty in mian xiang in a way most of the face's other features do not. Read as the Siblings Palace, xiongdi gong, they cover relationships with brothers, sisters and close peers, judged for length, shape and even arching, long well shaped brows read as harmonious sibling ties and a wide circle of loyal friends. Read at the same time as the Guardian Officer, the first of the system's five officers, the identical feature is judged instead for longevity and general temperament. The twelve palaces and the five officers are not two separate face maps a practitioner chooses between, they are two overlapping readings applied to the whole face at once, and the eyebrows are one of the clearest places that overlap becomes visible, since one physical feature is asked to answer two differently framed questions using the same visual evidence.
That doubling is not treated as a contradiction within the system. A reader trained in mian xiang expects the two readings to reinforce each other more often than not, since long, well groomed eyebrows plausibly support both a reading of harmonious peer relationships and a reading of even temperament and longevity, but the tradition keeps the two vocabularies, palace and officer, formally distinct rather than merging them into one combined eyebrow reading.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
One of the Twelve Palaces (shier gong), the facial zones each mapped to a specific life domain in Chinese physiognomy.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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.