What it is

Title. The book is 孫子兵法 Sūnzǐ bīngfǎ, "Master Sun's Methods of War", often just called 孫子 Sunzi. 兵 bīng means weapons, troops or military affairs. 法 fǎ means methods, rules or models. "Art of War" is a translator's title that goes back to Lionel Giles (1910). A plainer rendering is "military methods".

Genre. A military treatise of the 兵家 "military school" of the Warring States masters. From 1080 it headed the Song canon of the Seven Military Classics (武經七書). It is not a story. It is a set of compressed maxims, lists and images, each framed as "Sunzi said" (孫子曰). The received text runs to roughly 6,000 characters.

The 13 chapters (篇)

1. 始計 Laying Plans / Initial Estimates. War is the gravest matter of state. Compare both sides on five factors and seven questions before acting.
2. 作戰 Waging War. The cost of war. Long campaigns ruin the state, so live off the enemy and end things quickly.
3. 謀攻 Attack by Stratagem. It is best to take things whole. The order runs plans, alliances, armies, then cities. It ends with "know the other, know yourself".
4. 軍形 Dispositions (Form). First make yourself unbeatable, then wait for the enemy to become beatable.
5. 兵勢 Energy (Momentum). Regular and unexpected forces, momentum and timing. Look to the situation, not to individuals.
6. 虛實 Empty and Full. Take the initiative, strike where the enemy is empty, stay formless. War is like water.
7. 軍爭 Maneuvering. Make the roundabout road direct. Signals, morale, and rules for not pressing a trapped enemy.
8. 九變 Nine Contingencies. Some roads are not taken and some orders are not obeyed. Weigh gain and harm together. The five dangers in a general.
9. 行軍 The Army on the March. Where to camp, and how to read enemy intent from dust, birds and behaviour. Discipline and trust.
10. 地形 Terrain. Six kinds of ground and six kinds of defeat, all laid on the general. The general who "seeks no fame".
11. 九地 Nine Kinds of Ground. The psychology of troops at different depths in enemy land, down to "death ground". The Wu and Yue boat.
12. 火攻 Attack by Fire. Five fire attacks, then a warning: never go to war out of anger.
13. 用間 The Use of Spies. Foreknowledge comes from people, not spirits. The five kinds of agents.

Origins and authorship

The traditional account. Sima Qian's Shiji (c. 100 BCE) tells of Sun Wu 孫武 from the state of Qi, who presented thirteen chapters to King Helü of Wu (r. 514 to 496 BCE). In the famous story he drilled the king's palace women and executed two favourite concubines who laughed at his orders. On this account the book dates to about 500 BCE. That view is still widely held in China.

Doubts. From the Song dynasty on, scholars such as Mei Yaochen and Ye Shi questioned the early date. The Zuozhuan, which names most figures of the period, never mentions Sun Wu. The text describes armies of 100,000, professional generals and long campaigns, which many historians see as Warring States conditions (5th to 3rd century BCE). In the early 20th century Liang Qichao suggested the author was Sun Wu's supposed descendant Sun Bin 孫臏 (4th century BCE). Britannica says only that the author's identity "remains uncertain".

Yinqueshan 銀雀山, 1972. Construction workers near Linyi, Shandong, uncovered two Western Han tombs dated between about 140 and 118 BCE. Tomb 1 held 4,942 bamboo slips, including fragments of all thirteen received chapters, five related lost pieces (among them 吳問 "The King of Wu's Questions"), and a separate Sun Bin bingfa lost for over 1,400 years. What this changed:

• The theory that Sun Bin wrote the Sunzi lost ground: two distinct "Master Sun" texts existed side by side in the early Han.
• A version close to the received text existed by the 2nd century BCE.
• The slips differ in places from the received text but agree with quotations in Han and Tang sources.

Where scholars stand. There is no consensus. A common middle view is an early core from the 5th century BCE, reworked during the Warring States. Some date completion to about 500 to 430 BCE; others, including Victor Mair (2007), argue for later. Treat any single date as uncertain.

Commentators. The Hanshu catalogue lists an 82-chapter Wu Sunzi with 9 illustrations, so the text grew in the Han. Cao Cao 曹操 (155 to 220 CE) wrote the earliest surviving commentary and worked from the 13-chapter core; his edition shaped every later text. The Song compilation 十一家注孫子, "Eleven Commentators", gathers Cao Cao, Du Mu, Mei Yaochen, Zhang Yu and others. Most English translators lean on these.

Core ideas

1. War as a grave, costly last resort (Ch. 1, 2, 12). The book opens by calling war "the ground of life and death" (死生之地). Chapter 2 counts the cost in silver, grain and ruined households, and says no state has ever gained from a long war. Chapter 12 closes: the dead cannot come back. Popular summaries keep the tactics and drop this sobriety.
2. Calculation before commitment (Ch. 1). The 廟算 "temple reckoning" is a structured comparison of the two sides on five factors (道 way, 天 heaven, 地 earth, 將 commander, 法 method) and seven questions, such as whose rewards and punishments are clearer and whose troops are better trained. "More counts win, fewer counts lose." It is an assessment method, not a mindset.
3. Winning whole 全 (Ch. 3). The ideal is to take a state, army or unit intact. "Subduing without fighting" is best partly because a ruined prize and a bled army are poor gains. The ranking of plans, alliances, armies and cities is a ranking by cost. It is not pacifism.
4. Make yourself unbeatable, then wait (Ch. 4). "Being unbeatable lies with yourself. Being beatable lies with the enemy." The same passage says one "can know victory but cannot make it" (勝可知而不可為). Popular versions skip this humility.
5. Form and momentum 形 and 勢 (Ch. 4, 5). 形 is the visible layout of forces. 勢 is the potential a layout releases, like a drawn crossbow or a round stone at the top of a slope. A good commander "seeks it in 勢 and does not blame people". It is a situational, almost impersonal view of success.
6. Regular and unexpected 奇正 (Ch. 5). Engage with the regular, win with the unexpected. The two generate each other endlessly, like five notes making endless tunes. Surprise depends on a solid regular base.
7. Initiative and emptiness 虛實 (Ch. 6). Move others and don't be moved (致人而不致於人). Strike the empty, avoid the full. Be formless so the enemy must guard everywhere and is thin everywhere. The water image stands for adapting to the enemy, not for passivity.
8. Adaptation and the general's judgment (Ch. 8, 10). "There are ruler's orders one does not obey." The context is the general's duty to the state's real interest. Five traits are deadly in a general: recklessness, clinging to life, a quick temper, touchy pride, and too much tender care for the troops.
9. Leadership through consistency and care (Ch. 9, 10). Orders must be carried out as a steady habit. Care for troops like children, but "kindness without command spoils them". Discipline and affection come as a pair.
10. Knowledge from people (Ch. 3, 13). Foreknowledge cannot come from spirits, analogy or astrology. It comes from people who know the enemy's situation. Sunzi calls it "the height of inhumanity" to begrudge money for spies while the people pay for years of war.

Key terms

Common misreadings

1. "All warfare is based on deception" as a life rule. 兵者，詭道也 in Ch. 1 introduces a list of battlefield ruses: look unable when able, near when far. It is about misleading an enemy army. The same book requires 信, trustworthiness, in the general, and orders "carried out as a steady habit" with his own people. Deception points outward; trust within the group is the base.
2. "Know your enemy and know yourself and you will win every battle." The text says 百戰不殆: "in a hundred battles you will not be in danger". It does not promise victory. Know only yourself and you win one, lose one. Chapter 10 adds that you must also know heaven and earth.
3. "Win without fighting" as pacifism. 不戰而屈人之兵 is about making the enemy yield intact so you can use what you gain. The book assumes armies, sieges and fire attacks. The point is economy of force.
4. "Every battle is won before it is fought" as certainty. Chapter 4's "winning first" means making yourself unbeatable and waiting for the enemy's mistake. The same chapter says victory "can be known but not made".
5. Business book flattening. These books turn the general into a CEO. They drop the stakes (human lives, the state's survival), the insistence that war be avoided and kept short, and the ideal general who "seeks no fame and does not dodge blame". The finest victories, Sunzi says, earn "no name for wisdom, no merit for courage". The book is sceptical of heroics.
6. "Some orders are not obeyed" as a licence for defiance. 君命有所不受 is tied to the people's safety and the ruler's real interest, not personal autonomy.
7. "Written by one man in 500 BCE." Authorship and date are open, and the text was edited, most of all by Cao Cao.

The post, checked

The carousel said: "Wars are won before the first blow is struck. The victor wins in the mind first, long before drawing a sword. Reacting out of fear is the mark of those who have already lost."

• "Wars are won before the first blow." A loose paraphrase with a real base: Ch. 4, 勝兵先勝而後求戰，敗兵先戰而後求勝, "a winning army wins first and then seeks battle; a losing army fights first and then looks for a win", plus the temple reckoning of Ch. 1. The slide makes it absolute, where Ch. 4 says victory can be known but not made.
• "Wins in the mind first." A psychological reframing. Sunzi's "winning first" is material and organisational: leadership, terrain, discipline, training, rewards. Swords are modern imagery; his world is chariots, crossbows and supply carts.
• "Reacting out of fear." No such line exists. Chapter 12 warns against anger and resentment, not fear. Chapter 8 lists clinging to life as one of five dangers, beside recklessness and hot temper. Chapter 7 advises meeting noise with calm. The line is built from these moods.

Verdict: "preparation" is a fair theme. The slide turns concrete, cost conscious planning into a self help mindset and invents the fear line.

Reception

• China. Head of the Seven Military Classics (1080) and core of military exams. It shaped the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Mao Zedong quoted 知彼知己 in his 1930s strategic writing.
• Japan. Known as Sonshi. Takeda Shingen's banner 風林火山 comes from Ch. 7: 其疾如風，其徐如林，侵掠如火，不動如山. The claim that Kibi no Makibi brought it back in 735 is traditional and unconfirmed.
• Vietnam. Studied in the classical tradition; the claim that Võ Nguyên Giáp studied it is often repeated but thinly sourced.
• The West. Jean Joseph Marie Amiot's French version (1772), Giles's English (1910), then a surge after the Vietnam War. Samuel Griffith's 1963 version entered the UNESCO collection. It now sits on military reading lists and in a large business and sports self help literature.

Translations and further reading

• Lionel Giles, Sun Tzu on the Art of War (1910). Public domain, with the Chinese and notes.
• Samuel B. Griffith, The Art of War (1963). A Marine general's version, with an essay on Mao.
• Roger T. Ames, Sun Tzu: The Art of Warfare (1993). First to use the Yinqueshan slips.
• Ralph D. Sawyer, in The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (1993).
• John Minford, The Art of War (2002). Readable, with commentary selections.
• Victor H. Mair, The Art of War: Sunzi's Military Methods (2007). Strong on dating and language.
• Michael Nylan, The Art of War (2020).
• Further: Gawlikowski and Loewe in Early Chinese Texts (1993); Derek Yuen, Deciphering Sun Tzu (2014); Mark Edward Lewis, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (1990); François Jullien, A Treatise on Efficacy (2004), on 勢.

Notes on the text

Quotes were checked against Chinese Wikisource for all 13 chapters, and against ctext.org for chapters 1 to 6 and 8. The two editions differ in places, and passages where they disagree were avoided: Ch. 3 ends 每戰必敗 on ctext but 每戰必殆 on Wikisource; Ch. 6 reads 勝可為也 or 勝可擅也; the Ch. 6 water line reads 兵無常勢，水無常形 or 兵無成勢，無恆形. English Wikipedia currently names "Kai Wen" as the earliest commentator; the textual tradition says Cao Cao. English renderings on this site are original.

Sources

• ctext.org, The Art of War
• Chinese Wikisource, 孫子兵法
• Britannica, The Art of War
• ChinaKnowledge, Sunzi bingfa (Ulrich Theobald)
• Wikipedia, Yinqueshan Han Slips
• The Conversation, Sunzi, shi and strategy

What it is

The Daodejing 道德經 is a short classic of about five thousand characters. Early sources call it simply the Laozi 老子, after its supposed author. The title Daodejing came into use during the Han.

• 道 dào: a road or way; also "to speak" or "to guide". The first line plays on both: 道可道, "a way that can be walked, or spoken". As a term it means the source and pattern of all things, which cannot be fully named.
• 德 dé: often "virtue", but the older sense is closer to "power" or "potency", the quality a thing gets from the Dao. Wang Bi glosses it 德者，得也, "de means getting". Arthur Waley's title The Way and Its Power keeps this sense.
• 經 jīng: the warp thread on a loom, so a "classic". The label was given later and marks official status.

The received text has 81 short chapters in two parts: chapters 1 to 37, the Daojing, which opens 道可道, and 38 to 81, the Dejing, which opens 上德不德. The 81-chapter division (9 × 9) is linked to the Heshang Gong text and was not standard until about the Tang.

Style. Much of it rhymes. It is terse, full of parallel lines and paradox ("the greatest skill looks clumsy", ch. 45), and images: water, the valley, the uncarved block, the infant, the female. It names no people, places or events, which is part of why it is so hard to date. Many lines speak to a ruler or sage (聖人). It is not only a private guide to living.

Origins and authorship

The Shiji account. Sima Qian (c. 145 to 86 BCE) wrote the only early "biography". Laozi was a man of Chu named Li Er, called Dan, who kept the archives at the Zhou court and whom Confucius consulted on ritual. Seeing Zhou decline, he left for the west. At the border pass the keeper Yin Xi asked him to write down his teaching; he wrote two parts of about five thousand characters and "no one knew where he went". Sima Qian also records other men identified with Laozi, so the story was uncertain even then.

Why scholars doubt it. The Stanford Encyclopedia says "few scholars outside China today would subscribe fully" to this account.

• Early texts such as the Zhuangzi speak of "Lao Dan", never "Li Er".
• A. C. Graham argued that the story merges several legends.
• The text reads like an anthology. D. C. Lau called it one; the SEP calls it "the product of many hands over a long period".
• "Laozi" can simply mean "Old Master", a title of respect.

Dating. Tradition says the 6th century BCE; scholarly views range from the 8th to the 3rd. The working picture: sayings linked to Laozi written down from perhaps the late 5th century, growing and merging through the 4th, fairly stable by the mid 3rd century BCE.

Guodian 郭店 bamboo slips (1993). A Chu tomb in Hubei, dated about 300 BCE, held slips matching about two fifths of the received text, in three bundles, in a different order, with no Dao/De split. They are the oldest Laozi material known. Where received ch. 19 says 絕仁棄義, "cut off benevolence, discard rightness", Guodian reads something closer to "cut off artifice, discard deceit". The sharp anti Confucian edge may have grown over time, though Guodian still has the ch. 18 idea that benevolence appears after the Dao declines.

Mawangdui 馬王堆 silk texts (1973). Two full copies from a tomb sealed in 168 BCE. Both put the De half first, which is why Robert Henricks titled his translation Te Tao Ching. The Peking University Han bamboo text also puts De first. De first may have been the main Han order and may hint at an early focus on politics and ethics. This is not settled.

Commentaries. Wang Bi 王弼 (226 to 249 CE) reads the Dao through 無, "non being", as the root of 有, "being", and helped found Xuanxue. The Heshang Gong 河上公 commentary, credited to a legendary teacher of Emperor Wen of Han but probably later, links ruling a state with caring for the body.

Core ideas

1. The Dao cannot be fully named (ch. 1, 25, 32). "I do not know its name. I style it Dao" (ch. 25). Words point toward it but never hold it. This is a claim about the limits of language, not a claim that nothing can be said.
2. Wu wei 無為 is not doing nothing (ch. 3, 37, 48, 64). "The Dao does nothing, yet nothing is left undone" (ch. 37). It means acting without forcing, meddling or clinging to results. Chapter 64 shows it is timely: "act on it before it exists; order it before disorder comes."
3. Ziran 自然, "so of itself" (ch. 17, 25, 51). "The Dao models itself on what is so of itself" (ch. 25). Not "Nature" as a thing, but things taking their own course. The best rulers work so lightly that the people say, "we did it ourselves" (ch. 17).
4. Softness, water and the low place (ch. 8, 43, 66, 76, 78). Water benefits all things and does not contend, and it settles where people dislike to be. Rivers and seas rule the valleys because they lie lower. The soft are "companions of life", the stiff "companions of death". The point is yielding, lowness and not competing more than grit.
5. Return and reversal 反 (ch. 16, 25, 40). "Reversal is the movement of the Dao; weakness is its use." Things pushed to an extreme turn into their opposite: "fortune leans on misfortune" (ch. 58). Knowing this pattern is 明, clarity.
6. Emptiness makes things useful (ch. 4, 5, 11). A hub, a pot and a room are useful for their empty space. "What is there gives benefit; what is not there gives use." Emptiness is room to work in, not a void to fear.
7. The sage ruler (ch. 3, 17, 57, 60, 80). Much of the text is advice on government: fewer laws, fewer taxes, less display, no wars of glory. "Govern a big state as you would cook a small fish" (ch. 60). Some lines are hard to square with modern values, such as keeping the people "without knowledge and without desire" (ch. 3) and "simple" (ch. 65). Readers still argue whether these mean control or simplicity.
8. Knowing enough and knowing when to stop (知足, 知止; ch. 9, 33, 44, 46). "No disaster is greater than not knowing when you have enough" (ch. 46). Overfilling, hoarding and pride are treated as roots of ruin.
9. A critique of performed virtue (ch. 18, 19, 38). "When the great Dao is abandoned, there are benevolence and rightness" (ch. 18). Chapter 38 calls ritual "the thin edge of loyalty and trust and the start of disorder". The target is virtue enforced from outside, not kindness: ch. 67 names compassion 慈 as the first of three treasures.
10. Small beginnings and care at the end (ch. 63, 64). "Plan the hard while it is easy; do the great while it is small." "People often ruin things when they are nearly done. Be as careful at the end as at the start." This is the book's clearest teaching on steady effort.

Key terms

Common misreadings

1. Wu wei as laziness. The text asks for timely, light, well placed action. "Doing nothing" means doing nothing forced.
2. "Go with the flow." Water in the text takes the low place, serves without contending, and wears down the hard by being soft. The slogan also drops the political setting and the demands on rulers: restraint, lower taxes, no aggressive war.
3. New Age misquotes. Many lines credited to Laozi are not in the book, such as "Watch your thoughts, they become your words" and "When the student is ready the teacher will appear". Warning signs: self help phrasing, Buddhist or Zen language (the Laozi predates Buddhism in China), and no chapter number.
4. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Chapter 64 says 千里之行，始於足下, "begins beneath your feet". The stress is on starting where you stand, inside a chapter about acting early while things are small.
5. Only personal advice. A large share speaks to rulers (ch. 3, 17, 29, 30, 57, 60, 61, 65, 75, 80).
6. "The eternal Tao." 常 means constant or lasting. God language goes beyond the text.

The post, checked

The carousel said: "Water wears away stone without rushing. It prevails through persistence, not brute force. What is too rigid is the first to break. You want quick results, but give up by the third day."

• "Water wears away stone" is not in the Daodejing. The idiom 水滴石穿, "dripping water pierces stone", comes from the Song notebook Helin Yulu 鶴林玉露 by Luo Dajing, in a story about the official Zhang Guaiya sentencing a clerk who stole one coin a day. Latin has the same image (gutta cavat lapidem).
• What chapter 78 says: 天下莫柔弱於水，而攻堅強者，莫之能勝. "Nothing is softer than water, yet nothing does better at attacking the hard." It is about softness beating hardness, and how hard it is to live by what we already know. It says nothing about time or dripping. "Persistence" is the slide's word.
• "What is too rigid breaks" is a fair gist of ch. 76: the stiff go with death, the supple with life; "a strong tree meets the axe". Its frame is life and death and the danger of force, especially military force.
• "Give up by the third day" has no source in the text. It echoes the folk saying 三天打魚，兩天曬網, "fish three days, dry the nets two".

Verdict: one fair paraphrase, one real image pushed toward a different moral, one later idiom, one invented line. For "consistency", the honest anchors are ch. 64 (be as careful at the end as at the start), ch. 63 (hard things start easy), ch. 33 (強行者有志, "who keeps going has resolve") and ch. 23 (sudden storms do not last).

Reception

• Religious Daoism. From the 2nd century CE the Celestial Masters treated Laozi as an embodiment of the Dao and the text as scripture. The Tang ruling Li family claimed descent from him, and in 733 Emperor Xuanzong added the book to the exams.
• Commentary. Wang Bi's commentary shaped Xuanxue. Counts of Chinese commentaries run to about 700.
• Buddhism and Chan. Early Buddhist translators borrowed Daoist words such as 無 and 道. Chan shares the book's distrust of words, though historians usually credit the Zhuangzi with more direct influence.
• Translation. A Sanskrit version in the 7th century; over 2,000 translations by Misha Tadd's count. It is often called the most translated book after the Bible; that ranking is unverified.

Translations and further reading

Close to the Chinese: D. C. Lau (Penguin, 1963; revised with Mawangdui, 1989); Wing Tsit Chan (1963); Richard John Lynn (1999, with Wang Bi's commentary); Robert Henricks (1989 Mawangdui; 2000 Guodian); Philip J. Ivanhoe (2002); Roger Ames and David Hall (2003); Hans Georg Moeller (2007); Brook Ziporyn (2023); Arthur Waley (1934).

Literary versions, better read as poems after the text: Stephen Mitchell (1988), often described as built from other English versions and departing from the Chinese; Ursula K. Le Guin (1997); Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo (1993), closer than most.

Further: SEP "Laozi" (Alan Chan); A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao (1989); Russell Kirkland, Taoism (2004); Kohn and LaFargue, eds., Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching (1998).

Notes on the text

Chinese follows the received Wang Bi text on Chinese Wikisource. Open questions: the Mawangdui wording of ch. 64; the date of the Heshang Gong commentary; the ch. 76 variant 木強則兵 versus 折; ch. 41, where Mawangdui B reportedly reads 大器免成, "the great vessel is never finished", instead of 晚成, "finished late". English renderings on this site are original.

Sources

• Chinese Wikisource, 道德經 (王弼本)
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Laozi
• Britannica, Tao Te Ching
• Stefan Stenudd, Fake Lao Tzu Quotes
• Goodreads, the misattributed water quote

What it is

The Lunyu 論語: lun 論 means "to sort out" or "discuss", yu 語 means "sayings", so roughly "sorted sayings" or "edited conversations". "Analects" comes from a Greek word for gleanings.

The received text has 20 books (篇), each named after the first words of its opening chapter, not a theme: 學而 "Learning and..." is Book 1, 堯曰 "Yao said" is Book 20. Most chapters are one line sayings that begin 子曰, "The Master said". Others are short exchanges where a disciple or ruler asks and Confucius answers. Book 10 is almost all portrait: how Confucius dressed, ate, stood at court and behaved in his village.

The main speaker is Confucius (孔子 Kongzi, traditionally 551 to 479 BCE), a minor official and teacher from the state of Lu. Disciples speak too:

• Yan Hui 顏回, the favourite, praised for loving learning and staying content in poverty. He died young (11.9 to 11.11).
• Zilu 子路, bold, blunt and often gently teased.
• Zigong 子貢, clever and a good speaker, a merchant who became a diplomat.
• Zengzi 曾子, known for filial piety and daily self examination (1.4). His followers probably shaped some of the text.

Rulers such as Duke Ai of Lu and Ji Kangzi appear, as do hermits who mock Confucius for trying to fix a broken world (18.5 to 18.7).

Origins and compilation

The traditional account. Ban Gu (1st century CE) says disciples kept notes of the Master's words and edited them after his death in 479 BCE.

Layers. Cui Shu (Qing) argued that the last five books are later. Itō Jinsai split the text into Books 1 to 10 and 11 to 20. E. Bruce and A. Taeko Brooks, in The Original Analects (1998), argue that the text grew book by book over about two centuries with Book 4 as the oldest core. Many scholars take the layering seriously; the Brooks' exact dating is debated. Treat it as one scholarly view.

Some scholars, such as Zhu Weizheng and Michael Hunter, note the Analects is hardly cited by name before the 2nd century BCE and argue its final shape is Han. Newer bamboo finds from around 300 BCE (the Anhui University Zhongni yue 仲尼曰) contain overlapping sayings, showing Confucius collections existed by the mid Warring States.

Han versions. Sources describe a Lu version (20 books), a Qi version (22) and an "Old Text" version found in a wall of Confucius's house (21). Zhang Yu (d. 5 BCE) merged Lu and Qi; that merged text is the ancestor of ours.

The Dingzhou 定州 manuscript. Found in 1973 in a Han tomb in Hebei dated about 55 BCE, burned in antiquity and damaged again in the 1976 earthquake. Just under half survives. Where it survives it differs in wording, suggesting the text was still fluid in the 1st century BCE. A copy appeared in Pyongyang (1992), and the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun (59 BCE) appears to hold the lost Qi version.

Zhu Xi and the exams. He Yan's commentary (c. 249 CE) was standard for about a thousand years. Zhu Xi (1130 to 1200) then grouped the Analects with the Mencius, Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean as the Four Books 四書 (1190). From 1313 his readings were the official standard for the civil service exams, until 1905. For six centuries most educated Chinese men met the Analects through Zhu Xi.

Core ideas

1. 仁 ren, humaneness. The highest ethical term, and Confucius rarely says anyone has reached it. He defines it differently for different students: "love people" (12.22), "master the self and return to ritual" (12.1), "wanting to stand, help others stand" (6.30). It is within reach ("I want ren, and here it is", 7.30) yet hard to sustain.
2. 禮 li, ritual and propriety. Everything from temple rites to greeting a guest. Ritual shapes feeling and makes social life humane, but ritual without ren is empty (3.3), and sincerity beats polish: "in mourning, better grief than form" (3.4).
3. 君子 junzi and 小人 xiaoren. Junzi first meant "a lord's son", noble by birth. The Analects redefines it as noble by character. The petty person thinks of profit; the junzi thinks of what is right (4.16). In places the pair keeps its social sense: in 12.19 it means rulers and commoners.
4. 學 xue and 習 xi, learning and practice. The book opens with learning practised at the right times (1.1). Learning pairs with thinking (2.15). In 17.2, practice or habituation is what makes people differ, when by nature they are close.
5. 孝 xiao, filial piety. Respect, not just feeding: "even dogs and horses are fed" (2.7). Children may gently remonstrate (4.18). Some passages favour family over public justice (13.18), which readers still debate.
6. 正名 zhengming, rectifying names. Asked what he would do first in government, Confucius says "correct names" (13.3). "Ruler as ruler, minister as minister, father as father, son as son" (12.11) asks each role holder, the ruler included, to live up to the role.
7. 忠恕 zhong shu and the negative golden rule. Zengzi sums up the "one thread" as doing your best for others and reciprocity (4.15). "What you do not want for yourself, do not impose on others" (15.24). The SEP cautions that reading it as a universal law owes much to its likeness to the Bible's Golden Rule.
8. Rule by virtue, not only law (2.3). Punishment teaches people to avoid penalties without shame; virtue and ritual give them a sense of shame. The ruler's own conduct is the main tool (12.19, 13.6).
9. 中庸, the mean. Named once (6.29), present often: "going too far is like falling short" (11.16).
10. 為己, learning for oneself. "In the past, learners studied for themselves; now they study for others" (14.24), meaning to impress. Self cultivation still points outward: the junzi cultivates himself "to bring peace to others" (14.42).

Key terms

Common misreadings

1. "Confucius say" and fake quotes. "Choose a job you love, and you will never work a day in your life" is not in the book; the earliest strong match is a 1982 Princeton Alumni Weekly quote. Real phrases get twisted too: 以德報怨, "repay injury with kindness", is a view Confucius rejects in 14.34 ("repay injury with uprightness"). 三思而後行, "think three times", he calls excessive: "twice is enough" (5.20).
2. Confucius as only about obedience. Serve a ruler by "not deceiving him, and standing up to him" (14.22). A great minister serves by the Way, "and when he cannot, he stops" (11.24). One who keeps his word "no matter what" is called a small man (13.20). Loyalty means doing your best, not doing as told.
3. Women and 17.25. "Only women and small people are hard to look after." One of very few lines on women, and it shaped attitudes for centuries. Zhu Xi and others read 女子 and 小人 as a household's concubines and servants; many scholars accept it reflects the gender views of its time. Nothing settles the narrow reading. Show the line and the debate; do not explain it away.
4. A rule book. The text is a loose record of conversations. Confucius gives different students different answers to the same question: in 11.22 he tells cautious Ran You to act now and rash Zilu to wait. Lifting lines out of their exchange loses what they meant.

The post, checked

The carousel said: "You are shaped by what you repeat every day, when no one is watching. True character is forged where there is no audience and no applause. All that matters is who you are when you are alone."

• Holds up: repetition shapes you. 17.2, 性相近也，習相遠也, "by nature close, by practice far apart", plus 1.1 and the daily self check of 1.4. Note 習 can also mean custom or surroundings, not only private routine.
• Holds up: not learning for applause. 14.24 and 1.1, 1.16, 4.14 all say not to fret about being unknown.
• Misattributed: "when no one is watching". 慎獨, "watchfulness when alone", comes from the Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean, chapters of the Book of Rites later grouped with the Analects. Confucian, but not the Analects.
• Reversed: "all that matters is who you are alone". In the Analects, character is shown in relationships, ritual, family and office. Ren is "loving people" (12.22). Two of the three daily questions in 1.4 are about others. When hermits urge him to withdraw, he refuses: "we cannot flock with birds and beasts" (18.6).
• Overstated: "no applause". The junzi "is troubled at dying with his name unspoken" (15.20). He rejects chasing reputation, not reputation earned.

Verdict: sound on habit and on not learning for show; misattributes 慎獨; recasts a social ethic as a solitary one.

Reception

A primer in the Han, read before the Five Classics. He Yan read it alongside Daoist ideas; Zhu Xi tied it to a cosmology of 理 and 氣. Exam material from 1313 to 1905, and core reading in Korea, Japan and Vietnam, where scholars such as Itō Jinsai challenged Zhu Xi. Jesuits brought it to Europe, where Leibniz praised Confucius. May Fourth reformers and later the Communist Party attacked it as a symbol of hierarchy; since the 1980s it has revived through schools, TV lectures and state use. Western scholarship now reads it as a layered text with a history, helped by excavated manuscripts.

Translations and further reading

• D. C. Lau (Penguin, 1979): clear and reliable.
• Edward Slingerland (Hackett, 2003): with traditional commentaries, the best way to see how Chinese readers understood each passage.
• Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr. (1998): uses the Dingzhou text.
• Annping Chin (Penguin, 2014).
• Robert Eno (2015): free PDF from Indiana University.
• Brooks and Brooks, The Original Analects (1998): reordered by their theory.
• Arthur Waley (1938), Simon Leys (1997), James Legge (1861).
• Further: SEP "Confucius"; Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (1972); Bryan Van Norden, ed., Confucius and the Analects (2002); Michael Hunter, Confucius Beyond the Analects (2017).

Notes on the text

Chapter numbers follow ctext.org; other editions differ (the stable fire is 10.12 on ctext, 10.17 in Lau and Slingerland). Books 1 to 17 were checked against ctext; Books 18 to 20 against a secondary online edition that has at least one typo in 18.5, so 18.6 is used instead. English renderings on this site are original.

Sources

• ctext.org, Analects
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Confucius
• Britannica, Lunyu
• Britannica, Sishu
• The World of Chinese, Things Confucius never said
• Quote Investigator, Choose a job you love
• Columbia, Confucius on women and servants

What it is

The Yijing 易經, "Classic of Changes", also called the Zhouyi 周易, "Changes of Zhou", is a layered book, not one work by one author.

The core: 64 hexagrams. Each hexagram (卦) is a stack of six lines, solid (yang 陽) or broken (yin 陰). Each has a name, a short judgement (卦辭) and six line statements (爻辭) read from the bottom up. The statements are terse and often strange: a fox wetting its tail while crossing a river, frost that means hard ice is coming, a dragon hidden in the deep. They carry divination formulas such as 吉, good fortune, and 凶, misfortune.

Trigrams. Each hexagram can be read as two three line trigrams (八卦): 乾 heaven, 坤 earth, 震 thunder, 巽 wind, 坎 water, 離 fire, 艮 mountain, 兌 lake.

The Ten Wings 十翼. Ten commentaries written roughly from the 5th to 2nd centuries BCE: the Tuan 彖 on the judgements, the Xiang 象 "Images", the Xici 繫辭 or Great Treatise, the Wenyan 文言 on hexagrams 1 and 2, the Shuogua 說卦 on the trigrams, the Xugua 序卦 on the order, and the Zagua 雜卦 on contrasting pairs. Each hexagram's Great Image names its two trigrams and draws a lesson with 君子以…, "the noble person, taking this as a model…". Most of the everyday moral advice lives here.

Divination, in outline. The Xici describes the yarrow method: 50 stalks, one set aside, 49 split and counted off in fours, three rounds per line, eighteen changes for six lines. Each line comes out as 6, 7, 8 or 9. Seven and eight are stable; nine (old yang) and six (old yin) are moving lines that turn into their opposites and give a second hexagram. A later method throws three coins six times. The Xici's ideal: at rest, study the images and words; before acting, study the changes and the reading.

Origins

Tradition gives four sages: Fu Xi drew the trigrams, King Wen doubled them into 64 and wrote the judgements, the Duke of Zhou wrote the lines, Confucius wrote the Wings.

Why scholars reject it. Fu Xi is myth. The Wings differ in language and ideas from each other and from the core, and draw on Warring States cosmology. The Analects barely mentions the Yi. Ouyang Xiu doubted Confucius wrote the Xici as early as the 11th century.

What scholars now think. The core was compiled as a divination manual in the Western Zhou; Edward Shaughnessy argues for the late 9th century BCE. The line statements look like collected divination records and sayings. Core and Wings were joined into one canonical book in the Han, a Five Classic from about 135 BCE.

Oracle bone roots. Shang kings divined by cracking heated turtle shell and bone. 貞, later "correct and firm", means "to divine" or "to test" in Shang inscriptions. Groups of numbers on Shang and Zhou bones and bronzes, "numerical hexagrams" 數字卦, suggest yarrow number divination grew alongside the turtle.

Excavated manuscripts.

• Mawangdui silk text, from a tomb closed in 168 BCE: the oldest nearly complete copy, with a different, trigram based hexagram order, some different names, and commentaries not in the received text. In one, Confucius says he values the Yi for its moral meaning more than for fortune telling.
• Shanghai Museum bamboo text, a Chu manuscript of about 300 BCE bought on the Hong Kong market in 1994: partial, with red and black markers not seen later. The earliest known Zhouyi text.
• Shaughnessy's Unearthing the Changes (2014) also covers the Fuyang and Wangjiatai finds.

Two key readers. Wang Bi 王弼 (226 to 249) set aside the Han habit of matching every word to symbols and numbers and read each hexagram as a human situation in time: once you grasp the meaning, you may forget the image (得意忘象). Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130 to 1200) insisted the book began as divination and that moral readings should not hide that.

Core ideas

1. Change has a pattern. "Life giving rise to life is what is called change" (生生之謂易). "The sun goes and the moon comes; cold goes and heat comes." Change is ordered and readable, not a formless flood.
2. Timing 時. Each hexagram is a "time", and the same act can be right in one and wrong in another. "Flexibility is following the time" (變通者，趣時者也). The first line of hexagram 1 is "hidden dragon, do not act": sometimes the right move is to wait.
3. The noble person in the Images. The Great Images turn a picture from nature into conduct: "Heaven moves with strength; the noble person makes himself strong without pause." First aimed at the ruling elite, later widened to anyone working on their character.
4. Reversal at extremes. "When change reaches its limit it shifts; shifting it gets through; getting through it lasts" (易窮則變，變則通，通則久). "The dragon that goes too high has regrets." Hexagram 63, already across, warns: "good fortune at the start, disorder at the end."
5. Correct position. Lines are graded by place: yang in an odd place, centrality at the second and fifth lines. "The second line has much praise, the fourth much fear." Hexagram 52: "thoughts that do not stray beyond one's place."
6. Humility 謙, hexagram 15. The one hexagram whose six lines carry no bad omen. "Humility: success. The noble person carries through to the end." The Xici calls it "the handle of virtue".
7. Return 復, hexagram 24. After the stripping away of hexagram 23, one yang line returns at the bottom; it is linked to the winter solstice. "In seven days it comes back." The first line praises "returning before going far", which the Xici applies to Yan Hui, who never repeated a fault once he saw it.
8. Danger and steadiness 坎, hexagram 29. Water fills each hollow and flows on and "does not lose its trust". Danger is to be moved through with steady practice, not fled.
9. 貞: from "divine" to "steadfast". In the early text 貞 most likely meant "to divine"; 利貞 was "a favourable divination". The Wenyan recast it as a virtue: "貞 is the trunk that holds affairs up." Most translations use the later sense.
10. Oracle and wisdom book at once. Its authors saw divination itself as reflective, a way to face what cannot be known. Reading it only as fortune telling or only as philosophy misses how the layers work together.

Key terms

Common misreadings

1. Only a fortune telling book. The core began as a divination manual, but the Wings recast it as ethics and cosmology, and for two thousand years elite readers read it for moral insight. The reverse error, pure philosophy, hides its roots. Zhu Xi warned against both.
2. One ancient book by one sage. A composite: Western Zhou core, Warring States and Han commentary, later editing. The manuscripts show different orders, names and wording before the Han fixed the text.
3. "Leibniz got binary from the I Ching." Leibniz had worked out binary before the Jesuit Joachim Bouvet sent him Shao Yong's 11th century hexagram diagram (the letter reached him in April 1703). The diagram is a Song arrangement, not part of the Zhouyi, and the ancient authors had no place value binary. The match is real but after the fact.
4. Jung's synchronicity as the key. Jung's foreword to the Wilhelm/Baynes edition (1950) is one Western psychological lens. Chinese commentators spoke of resonance (感應), numbers and the sage's reading of patterns.
5. "Go with the flow." The book honours yielding and waiting, but also demands effort (自強不息), firm standards (立不易方), planning (作事謀始), foresight (思患而預防之) and self restraint (懲忿窒欲).
6. Change means chaos. "Their going out and coming in follow measure" (其出入以度).

The post, checked

The carousel said: "Nothing stands still, not even you. Living on autopilot does not stop time; it only leaves your life at the mercy of the current. You may feel at rest, but the current is slowly carrying you away." It pictured the Wilhelm/Baynes edition: Richard Wilhelm's German version (1924), made with the Qing scholar Lao Naixuan, put into English by Cary F. Baynes (1950), read through the Wings and a Neo Confucian lens.

• Supported: "nothing stands still". The Xici says the Yi "changes and moves without rest" (變動不居) and calls change "life giving rise to life". Hexagram 1's "strong without pause" is a real call to steady effort.
• Off: change as a blind current. The Yi treats change as patterned and cyclical, which is the whole reason divination makes sense.
• Off: stillness as failure. "Hidden dragon: do not act", waiting in hexagram 5, and keeping still in hexagram 52 are all right for certain times. The problem is being out of step with the moment, not being still.
• Off: urgency. The book's answer is timing: noticing first signs (知幾), preparing, correcting yourself.

Verdict: partly accurate. A fairer line: "Everything changes, but in patterns. Notice the moment, prepare, and act when the time is right."

Reception

A Five Classic from the Han and on the civil exams through the Qing. The Xici's "the Yi has the Great Ultimate" fed Daoist cosmology, and Wang Bi read it beside the Laozi. Zhou Dunyi, Shao Yong, Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi made it central to Song Neo Confucian metaphysics. South Korea's flag sets four trigrams (乾 坤 坎 離) around a yin yang circle. Leibniz saw his binary in Shao Yong's diagram; Jung used it for synchronicity; John Cage used coin operations to compose Music of Changes (1951).

Translations and further reading

• James Legge, The Yî King (1882): core and Wings, free on ctext.
• Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes (1950; German 1924): the most influential Western edition, folds the Wings into each hexagram.
• Richard John Lynn (1994): with Wang Bi's commentary.
• Richard Rutt, Zhouyi (1996): the Bronze Age core as divination text, Wings kept apart.
• Edward Shaughnessy, I Ching (1996, Mawangdui) and Unearthing the Changes (2014).
• John Minford (2014): both a wisdom reading and a separate Bronze Age oracle reading.
• Geoffrey Redmond (2017): core text in its early Zhou setting.
• Joseph Adler, The Original Meaning of the Yijing (2020): Zhu Xi's reading.
• Further: Richard J. Smith, The I Ching: A Biography (2012); Redmond and Hon, Teaching the I Ching (2014); SEP "Chinese Philosophy of Change (Yijing)".

Notes on the text

Most quotes were checked against ctext.org; the Images of hexagrams 15, 27, 31, 32, 41, 42 and 52 and the Xici I line against a traditional full text edition (the eee learning site). Variants: hexagram 63 reads 預防 or 豫防; 恆 and 恒 both occur; hexagram 24 line 1 prints 祗 or 祇. Xici chapter numbers differ between editions, so only "Xici I" and "Xici II" are cited. English renderings on this site are original.

Sources

• ctext.org, Book of Changes
• ctext.org, Xici II
• eee learning, Great Images
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Chinese Philosophy of Change
• Britannica, Yijing
• Columbia University Press, Unearthing the Changes

What it is

The Thirty Six Stratagems (三十六計) is a short, anonymous text listing 36 named stratagems. Most names are four character idioms; several in the last group are three characters (美人計, 空城計). Each name is followed by one to four terse lines of explanation, many of which quote or echo the I Ching: about 20 hexagrams, among them 損, 益, 復, 蒙, 需 and 坤. Many modern editions add 按語 notes with historical examples; those notes, the preface and the six group titles appear to be later than the stratagem lines.

The 36 fall into six groups of six. The first three suit a stronger position, the last three a weaker one.

勝戰計 · When winning

1. 瞞天過海 Cross the sea under heaven's nose. A later legend of Xue Rengui getting Tang Taizong across the sea to Korea unawares.
2. 圍魏救趙 Besiege Wei to save Zhao. Sun Bin of Qi, 354 to 353 BCE, Battle of Guiling.
3. 借刀殺人 Kill with a borrowed knife. No single source story.
4. 以逸待勞 Rest and wait for the tired. Echoes Sunzi ch. 7, 以佚待勞.
5. 趁火打劫 Loot a burning house. Often Yue attacking a weakened Wu.
6. 聲東擊西 Noise in the east, strike in the west.

敵戰計 · When evenly matched 7. 無中生有 Something from nothing. Zhang Xun's straw figures drawing enemy arrows, 756. 8. 暗渡陳倉 Openly repair the plank road, secretly march to Chencang. Han Xin, 206 BCE. 9. 隔岸觀火 Watch the fire from the far bank. Cao Cao waiting while the Yuan brothers fled, 207. 10. 笑裡藏刀 A knife hidden in a smile. The Tang official Li Yifu. 11. 李代桃僵 The plum dies for the peach. From a Han folk poem; illustrated by Tian Ji's horse race. 12. 順手牽羊 Lead the sheep away in passing. Taking small openings.

攻戰計 · In attack 13. 打草驚蛇 Beat the grass, startle the snake. 14. 借屍還魂 Borrow a corpse to return the soul. Xiang Liang enthroning a Chu heir, 208 BCE. 15. 調虎離山 Lure the tiger off the mountain. Sun Ce drawing Liu Xun away, 199. 16. 欲擒故縱 To catch, first let go. Zhuge Liang and Meng Huo, best known from the novel. 17. 拋磚引玉 Toss a brick to draw out jade. 18. 擒賊擒王 To catch the bandits, catch their chief. A line from Du Fu.

混戰計 · In chaos 19. 釜底抽薪 Pull the firewood from under the pot. Cao Cao burning Yuan Shao's stores at Wuchao, 200. 20. 混水摸魚 Muddy the water to catch fish. 21. 金蟬脫殼 The golden cicada sheds its shell. Often Bi Zaiyu's drum beating goats. 22. 關門捉賊 Shut the door, catch the thief. Bai Qi at Changping, 260 BCE. 23. 遠交近攻 Befriend the far, attack the near. Fan Ju's advice to Qin. 24. 假道伐虢 Borrow a road to attack Guo. From the Zuozhuan.

並戰計 · With allies and rivals 25. 偷樑換柱 Swap the beams and pillars. Often Zhao Gao and Li Si altering the First Emperor's will, 210 BCE. 26. 指桑罵槐 Point at the mulberry, curse the locust tree. 27. 假癡不癲 Play the fool, stay sane. Sima Yi feigning illness, 249. 28. 上屋抽梯 Lure them up, remove the ladder. The image is in Sunzi ch. 11. 29. 樹上開花 Make flowers bloom on the tree: show strength you do not have. 30. 反客為主 The guest becomes the host.

敗戰計 · When losing 31. 美人計 The beauty trap. Xi Shi, mostly legend. 32. 空城計 The empty city. Zhuge Liang facing Sima Yi, from the novel; doubted as history since the 5th century. 33. 反間計 Turn the enemy's spy. 34. 苦肉計 The self inflicted wound. Huang Gai before Chibi, from the novel. 35. 連環計 Linked stratagems. 36. 走為上 Leaving is best. Tan Daoji's retreat from Northern Wei.

The links between names and stories are traditions, not part of the core text, and several of the best known come from Ming fiction rather than history.

Origins

• The phrase is early; the book is not. The phrase first appears in the Book of Southern Qi: rebelling in 498, Wang Jingze mocked the court with 「檀公三十六策，走是上計」, "of Lord Tan's 36 plans, running is best". Lord Tan was the general Tan Daoji (d. 436). "Thirty six" was a stock way to say "many" (six times six, the yin number). No list existed then.
• A saying for centuries. 「三十六計，走為上計」 turns up in the Song notebook Lengzhai yehua and, from the Yuan on, in plays and novels including Water Margin.
• The book is late. Guo Huaruo placed its compilation in the late Ming or early Qing; some Chinese scholars argue as late as the late Qing. No author is named anywhere.
• Modern transmission. A handwritten copy reportedly surfaced in Bin county, Shaanxi, and was printed in 1941 in Chengdu as a "secret book of military methods". A man named Shu He found a copy at a Chengdu book stall and introduced it in the Guangming Daily on 16 September 1961. The PLA Political Academy printed it in 1962; wider editions followed from about 1979.
• A disputed claim. Reports that "Sui dynasty jade slips" found in 2003 prove Tan Daoji wrote it have no scholarly support.

Bottom line: a late compilation of older idioms and anecdotes, widely read only since the 1960s. It is not ancient in the way the Art of War is.

Core ideas

1. Read the situation first. Many entries say what to notice before what to do: 疑以叩實，察而後動, "when in doubt, probe for the facts; look, then act".
2. Deception is mainly the weaker side's tool. Many entries assume you cannot win head on (不敵其力). Indirection makes up for lack of force.
3. Position decides the move. The groups run from winning to losing. What fits one position is folly in another.
4. I Ching language. The explanations use yin yang and hexagram terms to frame each move as a shift between hidden and open, hard and soft (損剛益柔; 陰在陽之內).
5. Familiar things stop being checked. Stratagem 1: full preparation breeds complacency, and what you see every day you stop doubting. It is as much a warning about blind spots as a method.
6. Other people's force. 借刀殺人, 隔岸觀火 and 遠交近攻 are about third parties: who can be steered, who waits on the far bank.
7. Attention is the target. 聲東擊西 and 混水摸魚 are about pulling attention away and exploiting confusion. The defensive reading: sudden noise should make you check the quiet places.
8. Retreat is legitimate. 走為上: "keep the army whole and avoid the foe; falling back is no fault." The most quoted line, and the most humane.
9. Knowing when you are the target. The Swiss sinologist Harro von Senger names three uses: using stratagems, spotting an opponent's so you avoid the trap, and analysing them as an onlooker. He is most interested in the second and third.
10. Plans come in chains. 連環計: serious ruses come linked. Look for the second move behind the first.

Key terms

Common misreadings

1. "Thousands of years old." Only the phrase goes back to about 500 CE, and even then it named no list. The text is probably Ming or Qing and was barely known before 1961. English Wikipedia's "6th century" date confuses the phrase with the book.
2. "By Sun Tzu." Anonymous. It borrows lines from Sunzi, but scholars keep them apart. One Chinese article's title says it plainly: 「不要把《三十六計》與《孫子兵法》混為一談」, "don't lump them together".
3. A manual for manipulating people in private life. The text speaks of armies, enemies, allies, generals and terrain. Office politics and relationship readings are a modern habit of popular business books. Von Senger stresses recognising traps, not setting them.
4. "Proof that Chinese people are schemers." A stereotype. Deception in war is found everywhere: the Trojan horse, Allied deception plans in the Second World War, Machiavelli. China also has a strong ethical tradition critical of cunning. The book's popularity says more about a love of proverbs and Three Kingdoms stories than about national character.
5. "Every story is history." The empty city and Huang Gai's beating come from Ming fiction.

The post, checked

The carousel said: "An ancient guide to deceiving, distracting, and controlling others without their knowledge. The greatest danger is not realizing that this strategy is already being used against you. They distract you with screens and noise so you never look within yourself."

• "Ancient guide to controlling others": partly true, misleading. It is about deception in military and political conflict, and it is a late compilation whose famous phrase is older than the book.
• "The danger is not realising it is used on you": close to a real reading. Von Senger stresses this defensive use, though the line is the carousel's.
• "Screens and noise so you never look within": not in the text. A modern self help projection onto 聲東擊西. The book says nothing about inner life.

Verdict: a fairer framing is "a late Chinese collection of 36 war idioms about deception; its most useful lesson today is noticing when a move is being made on you".

Reception

Many of the idioms are everyday speech: 打草驚蛇, 趁火打劫, 走為上. The book spread widely in China after the 1960s, into schools, management courses, film, TV, comics and games, often via the Three Kingdoms. Abroad it fed an industry of "36 stratagems for business" titles. Harro von Senger's Strategeme (German, from 1988; the year is given as 1992 by one source) sold about 500,000 copies in about 12 languages and was translated into Chinese in 2006.

Translations and further reading

• Harro von Senger, The Book of Stratagems (1991), stratagems 1 to 18 with scholarly notes.
• Harro von Senger, The 36 Stratagems for Business (2004).
• Hiroshi Moriya, trans. William Scott Wilson, The 36 Secret Strategies of the Martial Arts: popular, applied.
• François Kircher, Les 36 stratagèmes (2003).
• Stefan Verstappen's online translation, readable, mixing Chinese and Japanese stories.
• On dating: Li Xingbin, 「《三十六計》成書時代考析」, Sunzi yanjiu 2018; Guo Huaruo's preface to 三十六計新編.

Notes on the text

The Chinese of each quoted stratagem was checked against the Wengu database, which follows Chinese Wikisource; names of all 36 against the Chinese Wikipedia list. Punctuation was added here; the source lines are unpunctuated. Variants: 並戰計 or 併戰計, 假道伐虢 or 假途伐虢, 拋/抛, 癡/痴. Stratagem readings on this site are framed to help you notice these moves, not to use them on people. English renderings are original.

Sources

• ChinaKnowledge, Sanshiliu ji (Ulrich Theobald)
• Wengu, 三十六計
• Chinese Wikipedia, 三十六计
• Wikipedia, Thirty Six Stratagems
• Beijing Review via china.org.cn, on Harro von Senger