12 Chinese War Idioms From Ancient Battlefields (Sun Tzu Era)

Unshakeable despite adversity

Literal: Broken a hundred times, never bending

Cai Yong wrote it on Qiao Xuan's memorial stele: his nature was grave, he disliked show and held to the plain, and he had the bearing of a man who could be broken (折) a hundred (百) times and would not (不) bend (挠), who faced a crisis and could not be moved from his ground. 折 is setbacks rather than ...

Commit with no retreat

Literal: Break pots sink boats

In 207 BCE Xiang Yu took his army across the river to relieve Julu, and then had the boats (舟) sunk (沉) and the cooking pots (釜) smashed (破), keeping three days' rations and nothing else. The Records of the Grand Historian is explicit that this was done to show the troops they would die rather than ...

Progress needs constant effort

Literal: Boat moving against current

A boat (舟) worked (行) against (逆) the current (水). The phrase is nearly always completed by its second half — 不进则退, if you do not advance you fall back — and that clause is the whole argument. What makes the image exact is that holding position is not a rest state: the river is doing work on the hul...

Borrow authority to intimidate

Literal: Fox uses tiger's power

A tiger caught a fox, and the fox said heaven had made it lord of the beasts, so eating it would be defying heaven — walk behind me and see whether anything dares stand its ground. The tiger followed, the animals fled, and the tiger concluded the fox had been telling the truth. The Strategies of the...

Plan strategy carefully

Literal: Work the counting rods in the command tent

Liu Bang, asked why he had won the empire when Xiang Yu was the better soldier, named three men he could not equal. Of Zhang Liang he said: 运筹帷幄之中，决胜千里之外 — turning the counting rods inside the tent curtains (帷幄), he decides victory a thousand li away. The Records of the Grand Historian keeps the spe...

Plan far ahead

Literal: Deep plan far thought

Jia Yi uses it in his essay on the faults of Qin, contrasting the rebel Chen She with the men of the earlier age: he had not their deep (深) planning (谋) or their far (远) reckoning (虑), and yet the empire fell to him. The pairing sets two dimensions against each other, depth and distance, and Chinese...

Repeated lie becomes truth

Literal: Three people make tiger real

Pang Cong, about to leave Wei escorting a hostage prince to Handan, asked his king whether he would believe a man who reported a tiger (虎) in the marketplace. No. Two men? He would wonder. Three (三) men (人)? The king said he would believe it. There is no tiger in the marketplace, Pang Cong said, and...

Advance methodically with caution

Literal: Each step make camp

At every step (步步) making (为) a camp (营). The phrase belongs to the vocabulary of vernacular military fiction rather than to any surviving manual, and it describes a specific and slow method: advance a short distance, fortify, secure the supply line behind you, and only then advance again. Its point...

Achieve secretly through misdirection

Literal: Secretly cross Chencang

Shut into Hanzhong in 206 BCE, Liu Bang took Han Xin's plan and came back out 从故道, by the old road, to fall on Zhang Han at Chencang. That is all the Records of the Grand Historian says. The decoy everyone knows — men set to conspicuously rebuilding the burnt plank roads while the army went another ...

Mutual conflict benefits third party

Literal: Snipe clam mutual fight

A snipe stabbed at the flesh of an open clam and the shell closed on its beak. Neither would let go: no rain today or tomorrow, said the bird, and you are a dead clam; no release today or tomorrow, said the clam, and you are a dead bird. A fisherman walking the bank took both. Su Dai told the story ...

Sharp, direct confrontation in argument

Literal: Needle points facing each other

Needle point (针锋) meeting needle point (相对). The expression comes out of Chan Buddhist dialogue, where the exchange of question and answer was described in exactly these terms — two points meeting precisely, with nothing wasted on either side. That origin explains its flavour. It describes oppositio...

Rigidly following outdated methods

Literal: Go by the drawing to find the horse

Mei Fu, memorialising the Han throne about how it chose officials, said that looking for able men by the current method was like consulting Bo Le's diagram and expecting to buy a thoroughbred in the market. The story behind the image is older than its famous telling: a Tang collection already has Bo...