暗度陈仓

Pronunciation: àn dù chén cāng Literal meaning: Secretly cross Chencang

Origin & Usage

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 way — appears first in Yuan drama, more than a thousand years later, and it is from the stage that the full saying comes: 明修栈道，暗度陈仓, openly repair the plank road, secretly cross (暗度) at Chencang (陈仓). Late or not, the addition is what makes it a stratagem rather than a march. The decoy has to be expensive and public, which is what separates it from ordinary surprise.

Examples

English: "The company quietly developed the technology while competitors focused elsewhere"

Chinese: 当竞争对手将注意力集中在其他地方时，该公司悄悄地开发了这项技术