空城计
The Empty Fort Strategy: Zhuge Liang's famous bluff
Name: ________________ Date: ________
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 小说 | xiǎoshuō | novel; fiction |
| 座 | zuò | constellation; zodiac sign (as in 巨蟹座) |
| 其中 | qízhōng | among them; in it |
| 忽然 | hūrán | suddenly; all of a sudden |
| 道 | dào | to say; to express (as in 说道, 道歉) |
| 要是 | yàoshì | if; in case |
| 全部 | quánbù | all; whole; entire; completely |
| 低 | dī | low; to lower (one's head) |
| 敌人 | dírén | enemy |
| 运 | yùn | games (short for 运动会: 奥运, 亚运) |
| 粮食 | liángshi | grain; food; cereals |
| 位置 | wèizhì | position; place; location |
English (for the teacher)
If the enemy had an army of 150,000 and you had only 2,500 soldiers, what would you do? Run? Surrender? In the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Zhuge Liang took a third way: he opened the city gates and sat down to play music.
That time, Zhuge Liang had taken five thousand soldiers to a small town to move grain, and half of them had already left with it. Suddenly messengers came riding in, one after another: “Sima Yi is coming this way with an army of 150,000!” There was not one general in the city who could fight, only a few civil officials. When they heard, everyone's face changed.
Zhuge Liang climbed the city wall to look, and sure enough the sky in the distance was full of dust. At once he gave a few orders: hide every banner; every soldier stays at his post, and anyone who wanders about or talks loudly loses his head; open all four gates, and put twenty soldiers at each one, dressed as ordinary people, sweeping the ground with their heads down.
Then he put on a loose, wide robe, took two boys with him and sat down on the gate tower, burning incense and slowly playing his zither.
When Sima Yi's vanguard reached the walls and saw all this, no one dared go any further. Sima Yi heard the report, laughed and said it couldn't be, and rode up to see for himself. Sure enough, there was Zhuge Liang on the gate tower, all smiles, burning incense and playing. The “ordinary people” at the gates kept their heads down and swept, as if they hadn't even noticed the army outside.
The longer Sima Yi looked, the more suspicious he grew, and he gave the order at once: “Rear guard to the front. Fall back, quickly!”
His son Sima Zhao didn't understand: “What if Zhuge Liang has no troops at all and is just putting on a show? Father, why pull the army back just like that?”
Sima Yi said, “Zhuge Liang has been careful his whole life; he never takes risks. Now he has thrown the gates wide open, so there must be an ambush inside. If we go in, we fall for it.”
And so the army of 150,000 marched away. Zhuge Liang watched them go, clapped his hands and roared with laughter. The officials around him were stunned and asked him what had just happened. Zhuge Liang said, “Sima Yi knows I'm always careful and never take risks, so when he saw all this he suspected an ambush. The truth is I didn't want to take a risk either; I just had no other way.” Then he said, laughing: “If I were Sima Yi, I wouldn't have left so fast!”
Later Sima Yi went back to the town, asked around, and only then learned that there had been just 2,500 soldiers in it that day and no ambush at all. He was full of regret, looked up and sighed: “I am no match for Zhuge Liang!”
The story is called the “empty fort strategy”, and it is very famous. But did it really happen? More than 1,500 years ago, the historian Pei Songzhi pointed out that Sima Yi wasn't even in that part of the country at the time, and that the story was false. But people loved the story anyway, and still tell it today. Today, when someone is unsure inside but looks perfectly calm on the outside, Chinese people say he is “singing the empty fort”. And if it's noon and you haven't eaten and your stomach is rumbling, you can say: “My stomach is singing the empty fort.”