China’s GB/T 13734-2008 divides each region of the ear into numbered zones and
builds a code from the region’s two-letter abbreviation and the number of the zone the point sits
in: TF4 is zone 4 of the triangular fossa, and AT1 zone 1 of the antitragus. A lower-case suffix
places a point within or between zones: i where two zones meet, a at a zone’s front end, and p,
l and u at its back, lower and upper edges, so AH6a, Sympathetic, sits at the front end of
antihelix zone 6. The WFAS standard of 2013 uses the same codes and, according to a
2016 comparison by two of the Chinese standard’s drafters, rests mainly on it.
Our catalogue keeps its own numbering under some of
the same prefixes, so a code copied from a paper resolves here to a different point:
Every paper that wrote TF4 for Shenmen, the point in the triangular fossa, was read as
prescribing the catalogue’s Decrease Blood Pressure Point.
The names have moved as well as the codes. Annex D of GB/T 13734-2008 lists, for
each point, the names earlier Chinese books gave the same place. The 1958 Chinese translation of
Nogier’s chart put the knee where the standard now puts the hip (AH5), and the abdomen where it puts
the lumbosacral spine (AH9). Earlier texts also exchanged chest and thoracic spine (AH10 and AH11)
and neck and cervical spine (AH12 and AH13). Three points have carried the name eye: Eye 眼 (LO5) on
the lobe, and Eye 1 and Eye 2 (目1, 目2) beside the intertragic notch, which the standard renamed
Anterior and Posterior intertragic notch (TG2l and AT1l). A paper that names its points but not its
chart can be misread the same way a bare code is.
What the corpus says
The figures below were counted in July 2026 from the extraction journal, the file
(protocols.csv) each extracted protocol is written to before it reaches the
database, one line per protocol. The script that counted them was not kept, and the journal has
changed since, so the counts cannot be re-derived from it today.
Each dropped reference raised an error; the misread ones raised none, so a fix aimed only at the
errors would have left every misread reference in place.
Of the nine open-access papers the crosswalk below was read from, three named a nomenclature:
one the WFAS standard,
one the Chinese standard alongside
Nogier’s European system, and one
the Chinese standard for where the concha points sit. Another
coded subcortex AT5 where the others have AT4, and mouth IC6 where the others have CO1.
The existing standards
Acupuncture already has several point standards. The World Health Organization published
standard point locations in 2008. China
maintains GB/T 12346-2021
for channel points and GB/T 13734-2008
for auricular points. The World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies (WFAS) publishes
its own.
ISO/TC 249, whose
SC 1 subcommittee took over its
Chinese-medicine work in March 2025, has published no auricular point nomenclature.
A further standard would add one more scheme for each paper to choose from. The codes lose their
meaning in citation: a paper prints a code without the scheme it comes from.
Two fixes
The first is a prefix. Write WFAS:TF4 or GBT13734:TF4 rather than TF4. A journal can adopt this
in a style guide and a reviewer can ask for it in a comment, and a machine can then resolve the
code without guessing.
The Lyon working group used the same fix in 1990. It agreed the ear region codes with a prefix:
MA-TF, MA-AT, MA-AH, MA-HX, where MA is derived from micro-system and auricular point. The
literature kept the two letters and the number and dropped the MA, the part that said whose
scheme a code belonged to.
Lyon adopted one point in the triangular fossa, MA-TF1, and it was Shenmen. In the numbering the
source papers below follow, TF1 is
Jiaowoshang, the superior
triangular fossa, and Shenmen is TF4. Our catalogue files Shenmen at TF10. Without
the MA, a WHO working group’s list and the Chinese national standard use the same code, TF1,
for different points.
One code also names three points. Lyon’s MA-AH9
is the neck. The AH9 in the papers below is the
lumbar spine. Our catalogue’s
AH09 is the lumbar muscle area beside it.
The second fix is a conversion table, and we built one. It is published below and as
a JSON file under CC BY 4.0. It maps auricular
codes as the WFAS and GB/T 13734-2008 standards print them onto the AcuiQ catalogue, and every
row names the article it was read from and the Chinese name it was matched on. We built it by
reading each source paper in full and taking the author’s own pairing of name and code. The
first summary we consulted gave TF4 as the sympathetic point, which the papers contradict; each
row therefore names the paper it was read from.
23 mappings came out of that: 21 traced to a printed pairing of name and code in an open-access
paper, and 2 read from the text of GB/T 13734-2008 at the section given. Codes we could not match
to a printed name are not in the table.
* Holds only for the paper it was read from, which numbers the point differently from the other
sources. Version 1.0.3, 23 rows.
One category was our own gap. We had been dropping every reference to the scalp acupuncture
lines, MS1 through MS14, because no catalogue we held contained them. The revised WHO
nomenclature of 1991 standardised them: part 1
fixed the 361 classical points, and part 2
the 8 extra meridians, 48 extra points and 14 scalp lines. Our catalogue lacked them, and they
have now been imported.
The 1991 WHO nomenclature contains no auricular points. A WHO working group met in Lyon in
November 1990 and adopted 39 ear points,
listed a further 36 as not yet considered, and recommended that WHO organise a subcommittee to
map the external ear and name its zones and points. WHO has published no auricular nomenclature since. China
issued GB/T 13734 in 1992,
under two years after Lyon, and revised it in 2008; WFAS published STANDARD-002:2012 in 2013.
What happens next
The crosswalk is versioned and takes new rows as papers are read. A journal or reviewer can ask
for the prefix (WFAS:TF4) today.
Corrections are welcome and will be credited. If a mapping here is wrong, we would rather know.
