There are numerous rhyme-tables 等韻圖 surviving from the Ming and Qing dynasties. For the most part, however, they do not faithfully reflect the pronunciations or the phonetic systems of the spoken language of the time. Rhyme-tables based on musical elements 樂律 or the xiang-su 象數 from the Book of Changes 易經 are metaphor-based innovations developed by their authors. Although to the modern eye they look wild and unorganized and are unable to satisfy the needs of scholars looking to reconstruct the phonetic system of Ancient Chinese, the structure of these rhyme-tables and the terminology used therein embody their authors’ understanding of phonetic structure and principles of phonetic change. This paper will look at these rhyme-tables from the perspective of cognition. Using Fauconnier and Turner’s theory of blended space, we will take the Huangzhong tongyyun 黃鍾通韻 to be the result of conceptual integration in order to clarify its structural principles and the reasons why its phonetic scheme was not faithful to actual pronunciations.