10 Chinese Idioms From The Art of War & Military Strategy

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...

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 ...

Eliminate root cause of problem

Literal: Remove firewood under pot

To draw out (抽) the firewood (薪) from under (底) the cauldron (釜). The nineteenth of the Thirty-Six Stratagems states the logic: you cannot meet the boiling water, so remove the fire instead. The distinction it draws is between the symptom and its supply, and the phrase always implies that direct eng...

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...

Maintain high vigilance awaiting challenge

Literal: Pillow spear await dawn

This comes from the Book of Jin, on Liu Kun, who wrote that he slept with his spear (枕戈) for a pillow waiting for dawn (待旦), determined that a rival should not strike at the invaders before he did. The competitive edge is in the original and usually lost: he was racing a colleague, not only the enem...

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...

Beyond comprehension or explanation

Literal: Cannot be thought discussed

Not (不) able to be (可) thought (思) or spoken (议). The phrase is Buddhist and technical in origin, describing what lies beyond the reach of conceptual thought and language — the standard Chinese rendering of the Sanskrit acintya. That is a strong claim, and ordinary use has worn it down considerably:...