60 Fun Facts About Sun Tzu

The name Sun Tzu is an honorific meaning what?

Master Sun: 'tzu' (zi in modern spelling) is a title of respect given to revered teachers, the same suffix as in Kongzi, 'Master Kong', the Chinese name of Confucius.

Sun Tzu wrote that supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without what?

Fighting: to win every battle is not the highest skill, he argues; best of all is to foil the enemy's plans, and the worst policy is to besiege walled cities.

Which Han-dynasty historian wrote the earliest account of Sun Tzu's life, in the Shiji?

The sinologist Victor Mair considers that short biography 'essentially fictional'.

Roughly how long after Sun Tzu's supposed lifetime was his first biography written?

400 years: tradition places him around 500 BC, but the first biography dates from the 90s BC, a gap that is one reason some scholars doubt he existed at all.

Sun Tzu's last chapter says foreknowledge of the enemy can only come from which people?

Spies: he lists five kinds, among them 'doomed spies', deliberately fed false information to pass on to the enemy.

Sun Tzu said a general who knows the enemy need not fear a hundred battles if he also knows what?

Himself: know the enemy and yourself, he wrote, and a hundred battles hold no peril, but know only yourself and you will lose a battle for every one you win.

In the best-known legend about Sun Tzu, the King of Wu tested him by having him drill whom?

Palace concubines: 180 of them, split into two companies with the king's two favourites as officers, who burst out laughing at his first commands.

In the legend of Sun Tzu's audition, what did he do when two trainee officers laughed at his drill orders?

Had them executed, over the king's protests, and the rest drilled flawlessly; his book states the principle, that there are commands from the ruler a general must not obey.

According to Sun Tzu, all armies prefer sunny places to dark ones and which kind of ground?

High ground: his reason was health as much as tactics, since an army that camps well stays free of disease, and that, he wrote, means certain victory.

Sun Tzu wrote that all warfare is based on what?

Deception: when able to attack, seem unable, he advised, and when near, make the enemy believe you are far away.

Later accounts say which refugee from Chu, bent on avenging his executed father, first recommended Sun Tzu at court?

Wu Zixu fled Chu after its king executed his father; when the army he and Sun Tzu served took Chu's capital, he is said to have dug up the dead king and given the corpse 300 lashes.

Which great chronicle of Sun Tzu's own era, sceptics have noted since the Song dynasty, never once mentions him?

Zuo Zhuan names most notable figures of the age and describes his supposed great victory in detail, yet never mentions Sun Tzu, the main reason scholars came to doubt he ever existed.

Sun Tzu advised that an enemy army hemmed in on all sides should always be left what?

A way out: he pairs the advice with a warning never to press a cornered enemy, because men with nowhere to run fight to the death.

Which weapon in The Art of War is cited as an anachronism for Sun Tzu's supposed lifetime?

Crossbows: the book likens a general's timing to releasing a crossbow trigger, a weapon historians say places its writing well after 500 BC, when Sun Tzu supposedly lived.

According to The Art of War, no country has ever benefited from what?

Prolonged warfare: long campaigns, he wrote, blunt weapons, empty the treasury and tempt neighbouring rulers to strike while you are weak.

Bamboo-slip copies of The Art of War turned up in 1972 in tombs of which dynasty?

Han: beside Sun Tzu's text in the same tomb library lay a military treatise by his supposed descendant Sun Bin, a book long thought lost for good.

Sun Tzu compared a general leading his army deep into enemy land to a climber who kicks away what?

The ladder: in the same passage the general burns his boats and breaks the cooking pots, so that his men can only go forward.

Sun Tzu's supposed descendant Sun Bin was framed for treason and punished by losing what?

His kneecaps, in the usual telling, though the oldest history says his feet: 'Bin' is thought to be a nickname taken from the punishment itself.

Sun Tzu said soldiers will follow a general into the deepest valleys if he regards them as what?

His own children: they will stand by him even unto death, he wrote, but troops who are indulged and never disciplined turn out like spoilt children, useless for anything.

According to The Art of War, birds suddenly rising in flight are the sign of what?

An ambush: in the same passage, startled animals mean a sudden attack is coming, while birds gathering on a campsite mean the enemy has already slipped away.

Sun Tzu's supposed descendant Sun Bin lured a rival into a trap by having his retreating army light fewer what each night?

Cooking fires: 100,000 the first night, 50,000 the next, then 20,000, so his pursuer assumed mass desertion and raced ahead into a narrow pass lined with archers.

How many chapters make up The Art of War?

13 chapters, each on one aspect of war, though an early imperial library catalogue lists a version swollen to 82.

Sun Tzu likened an army's tactics to which substance?

Water: it runs downhill, he wrote, so an army should avoid what is strong and strike what is weak, and like water it should keep no constant shape.

Which warlord of the Three Kingdoms era wrote the earliest surviving commentary on The Art of War?

Cao Cao wrote the oldest commentary that survives, though mastering the text did not make him invincible: his defeat at Red Cliffs in 208 left China split into three rival kingdoms.

Japan's first record of The Art of War dates from 760, when which dynasty ruled China?

Tang: a court chronicle for 760 has officers sent to learn Sun Tzu from Kibi no Makibi, a scholar who had spent years studying in Tang China.

'Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer' is often credited to Sun Tzu, but which film made it famous?

The Godfather Part II: Michael Corleone says it in the 1974 film, as a lesson learned from his father, and it ranks 58th on the American Film Institute's list of great movie quotes.

A Jesuit in Beijing made the first European translation of The Art of War in the 18th century, into which language?

French: Father Joseph Amiot's version was so loose that a later English translator dismissed it as 'little better than an imposture'.

Which Renaissance Italian's 1521 war manual shares its English title, The Art of War, with Sun Tzu's classic?

Niccolò Machiavelli's Art of War, a dialogue on how to raise and lead armies, was printed in his lifetime, while The Prince came out only after his death.

Lionel Giles, the 1910 English translator of The Art of War, kept Oriental manuscripts at which institution?

British Museum: from his desk there he savaged the only earlier English version, made by an army captain in Tokyo, as 'excessively bad'.

Which 19th-century general's On War, often set against Sun Tzu, calls war the continuation of politics by other means?

Carl von Clausewitz died of cholera in 1831 with On War unfinished, and his widow, Marie, edited and published it.

Admiral Tōgō, said to have been guided by Sun Tzu, destroyed which country's fleet at Tsushima in 1905?

Russia: its Baltic Fleet had sailed for seven months to reach him while Admiral Tōgō lay in wait, a choice said to echo Sun Tzu's advice to await a weary enemy at ease.

Mao Zedong partly credited The Art of War for his 1949 victory over which opponent?

Chiang Kai-shek, whose beaten Nationalists withdrew to Taiwan; Mao had worked Sun Tzu's ideas into his own writings on war through the 1930s and 1940s.

Which Vietnamese leader held up Sun Tzu as a model for his revolution against colonial rule?

Ho Chi Minh rarely wrote about Sun Tzu but always with praise, his biographer William Duiker says, and he hoped to beat better-armed enemies on political and moral ground.

At which 1954 battle did General Giáp, a devoted student of Sun Tzu, break colonial rule in Indochina?

Dien Bien Phu: the garrison's loss mattered less in military terms than psychologically, and the peace accords that followed split Vietnam into North and South.

Which American general, named among Sun Tzu's modern devotees, commanded the 100-hour ground war that freed Kuwait in 1991?

Norman Schwarzkopf kept Iraq braced for a seaborne landing on Kuwait's coast that never came, while his armour swung through the open desert in a wide 'left hook'.

In Wall Street (1987), which corporate raider tells his protégé to read The Art of War?

Gordon Gekko tells Bud Fox that every battle is won before it is ever fought, and beams that he's learning when Bud later quotes Sun Tzu back at him.

In which Bond film does the villain, a North Korean colonel, quote The Art of War to his father?

Die Another Day: 'I remember my Art of War,' he tells his father, and later a double agent is stabbed with a knife driven through a copy of the book.

In The Sopranos, who suggests to Tony Soprano that he read The Art of War?

Dr. Melfi, his therapist; after Tony praised the book on air in 2001, Oxford University Press sold out its stock and had to print 25,000 more copies.

Which Star Trek captain says he is glad Starfleet Academy still teaches the strategies of Sun Tzu?

Jean-Luc Picard, in the first-season episode The Last Outpost, after his first officer answers him with Sun Tzu's line that he will triumph who knows when to fight and when not to.

Which coach won the 2002 World Cup after having Art of War chapters slipped under his players' doors?

Luiz Felipe Scolari later said he never gave out the whole book, only had staff slip single chapters under the doors, and his Brazil side went on to lift the trophy.

Which NFL head coach credited The Art of War with helping him build the New England Patriots dynasty?

Bill Belichick boiled the book down to attacking weaknesses and using strengths, and ran the Patriots on its idea that contests are decided in preparation, before anyone takes the field.

Which Swedish metal band built its 2008 album The Art of War around the chapters of Sun Tzu's book?

Sabaton matched each chapter to a real battle, among them Gallipoli and the Polish stand at Wizna, and the record opens with a spoken passage from the book.

Who starred in the 2000 action spy film titled The Art of War?

Wesley Snipes plays a covert United Nations agent who goes on the run after being framed for the murder of the Chinese ambassador.

In The Art of War, what does Sun Tzu call the essence of war?

Speed: use it, he wrote, to catch the enemy unready, arrive by routes he does not expect and strike the places he has left unguarded.

According to Sun Tzu, sworn enemies caught by a storm will help each other if they are where?

In the same boat: his example was the men of Wu and Yue, bitter enemies, who he said would come to each other's aid like a left hand helping the right.

The Art of War opens by calling war a matter of what for the state?

Life and death: a road either to safety or to ruin, the opening lines go on, which is why, he says, war must be studied with the greatest care.

Sun Tzu's rule of thumb for a general with ten times the enemy's numbers was to do what?

Surround him: with five times the enemy's strength he advised attacking outright, and with fewer men than the enemy, keeping well out of his way.

Sun Tzu is traditionally placed in the 6th century BC, under which long-lived dynasty?

Eastern Zhou: by then its kings reigned in name only while rival states fought each other for supremacy, the constant wars that made a strategist's skills worth having.

Sun Tzu warned that no ruler should send an army into the field merely out of what?

Anger: a temper cools and gladness returns, he wrote, but a kingdom once destroyed cannot be rebuilt and the dead cannot be brought back to life.

According to Sun Tzu, at what time of day is a soldier's spirit at its keenest?

Morning: by noon it has begun to flag and by evening the men think only of camp, so a clever general, he wrote, avoids a fresh army and strikes a tired one.

Sun Tzu advised striking an army that is crossing a river at which moment?

When half is across: never meet the enemy in midstream, he wrote, and an army that has crossed a river itself should move well away from the bank.

Sun Tzu read an enemy who speaks humbly while stepping up his preparations as being about to do what?

Advance: and the reverse holds too, he wrote, for an enemy who talks fiercely and makes a show of charging forward is getting ready to pull back.

Sun Tzu likened a skilfully led army to which animal, whose tail strikes back when its head is attacked?

A snake, the shuai-jan of Mount Chang: strike its head and the tail attacks, strike its tail and the head attacks, strike the middle and both come at you.

What did Sun Tzu say should be done with enemy soldiers captured in battle?

Treated kindly and kept: captured chariots were to fly the victor's own flags and join his ranks too, which he called using the conquered foe to add to one's own strength.

A wise general, Sun Tzu wrote, makes a point of feeding his army by what means?

Foraging on the enemy: one measure of captured provisions, he reckoned, is worth twenty of your own, because supplying an army over great distances is what beggars a state.

To keep doubt out of the ranks, Sun Tzu told generals to forbid which common practice of ancient armies?

Taking omens: ban them and rid the army of its doubts, he wrote, and he was just as firm that knowledge of the enemy can never be had from spirits, only from other men.

Takeda Shingen's battle standard 'Fūrinkazan' takes which four words from Sun Tzu?

Wind, forest, fire, mountain: the standard quoted the book's advice that an army be swift as the wind, raid and plunder like fire and stand immovable as a mountain.

Sun Tzu advised signalling with fires and drums at night, and with what by day?

Flags and banners: shouted words do not carry across a battlefield, he explained, so an army needs signals that every man can see or hear if it is to move as a single body.

When attacking with fire, Sun Tzu warned a general never to strike from which side?

Downwind, where the blaze would be driven at his own men; he also advised waiting for very dry weather and for the days when a wind was likely to rise.

In 2014 Paradox issued The Art of War as an e-book alongside a same-named expansion for which strategy game?

Europa Universalis IV: the edition opened with a preface by the game's project lead, Thomas Johansson, advising players on how to apply Sun Tzu's teachings to their campaigns.