The Tao of Deception

No episode has been more famous throughout Chinese history than T’ien Tan’s innovative use of unorthodox measures to extricate the remnants of the state of Ch’i from a five-year siege at Chi-mo during the Warring States period.¹ In 333 BCE, the eastern state of Ch’i had exploited Yen’s mourning to invade and seize some ten cities, an affront that continued to rankle even though they were eventually returned. Two decades later, civil war then caused such disaffection among Yen’s populace that they refused to defend the state, allowing King Min of Ch’i to occupy it in 314 BCE. Persuaded not to annex it, in 312 BCE King Min supported the ascension of King Chao, who immediately committed himself to the task of reviving his vanquished state. Assiduously cultivating his Virtue in the prescribed fashion, he nurtured the people, sought out talented men, revitalized the military, and adroitly avoided conflict with other states. Finally, prompted by King Min’s arrogance and his recent conquest of Sung, King Chao embarked upon a campaign intended to punish Ch’i for its predatory behavior.

Having recently defeated armies from Ch’u and the Three Chin, attacked Ch’in, destroyed Sung, and aided Chao in extinguishing Chungshan, Ch’i possessed unsurpassed power and territory. Yen therefore cobbled together an allied force consisting of the states of Han, Wei, Chao, and Ch’in and invaded Ch’i in 285 BCE with Yüeh Yi as commander in chief. The coalition was disbanded shortly after they severely overwhelmed Ch’i’s forces west of the Chi River, though Yen’s armies continued to sweep through the countryside, seize the capital, subjugate several cities, and persuade others to voluntarily submit, all within six months. However, despite King Min having been slain, two Ch’i cities resolutely resisted demands to surrender as well as Yüeh Yi’s promise of leniency.

Unwilling to needlessly incur heavy casualties, Yüeh Yi undertook a virtually interminable siege. However, detractors back in Yen assailed his failure to swiftly reduce the remaining cities and accused him of wanting to prolong his authority or even become king of Ch’i. Since King Chao of Yen perspicaciously disbelieved these slanders, the siege continued for nearly five years. However, when King Chao died in 279, T’ien Tan, who had been named commander at Chi-mo by popular acclaim, exploited the new monarch’s flaws and inexperience to sow discord by employing double agents who successfully reiterated the same accusations, resulting in Yüeh’s replacement by Ch’i Chieh.

T’ien Tan then embarked on a multi-stage, unorthodox effort to simultaneously undermine the enemy’s will and rebuild the defenders’ spirit. First, he created an “auspicious omen” by having food left out in the courtyards whenever the people offered sacrifice, thereby attracting flocks of birds, a phenomenon that puzzled Yen’s soldiers. Second, he imparted a transcendent veracity to his measures by pretending to receive spiritual instruction. Third, correctly anticipating it would make his troops resolute, he ruthlessly sacrificed the well-being of prisoners held in Yen’s camp by volubly worrying that Ch’i’s spirit would be adversely affected if their noses were cut off. Fourth, he had double agents bemoan the severe consternation they would suffer if the outer graves were exhumed, thereby tricking Yen into enraging the populace when they burned the corpses. Fifth, his family led in the fortification work, he personally feasted his officers, and he nurtured Yen’s overconfidence by concealing the able-bodied, visibly displaying only the weak and wounded. Finally, T’ien Tan not only exploited the antique ruse of a false surrender to induce laxity but further augmented its effectiveness by bribing Yen’s generals.

As recorded in his Shih Chi biography, T’ien Tan then implemented his most famous unorthodox measure:

In the sense of difference being a virtue, denoting distinctiveness, ch’i early on came to be employed in reference to people marked by superior appearance, superlative physical skills, surpassing behavior or demeanor, transcending personality, or incisive thinking that set them outside or beyond the realm of the pedestrian, common, and ordinary. Thus the Han dynasty Shih Chi, China’s first synthetic history, occasionally records that powerful officials, upon first encountering hitherto unknown persons such as Han Hsin and Liu Pang, regarded them as “ch’i” and “ch’i ts’ai,” “extraordinary” and “extraordinary talents,” respectively.

Particularly unusual objects, spectacular scenes, and inspiring vistas similarly came to be designated as ch’i, a usage that continues to expand as uniquely shaped rocks command high prices as collectibles and highly visible personalities are termed ch’i nü-jen (“extraordinary” or “remarkable woman”) or ch’i-nan-jen (a “remarkable man”), such as in a recent newspaper headline about a hao-se ch’i-nan-jen, essentially a “rake” or “Lothario.”⁶ Thus, the movie title The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was translated as T’ien-chiang Ch’i-ping or “Ch’i Warriors Descended from Heaven” and troops of amazingly skillful Chinese acrobats routinely call themselves ch’i-ping, “unorthodox warriors.”

As early as the Warring States period, the character was also used in an active sense, to “make something different or unusual.” More intensively, it also conveyed a meaning of weird, extraordinary, and outlandish and was used to describe the mendicant persuaders who “made their clothes ch’i,” “outlandish” or perhaps even “bizarre,” as part of their effort to create an aura of distinctiveness and visibly suggest their disdain for normal constraints. ⁷ They were particularly noticeable or unusual in an era when the prescriptive materials subsequently codified in such ritual compendia as the Yi Li and Chou Li not only increasingly dictated conformity to certain rules and norms of behavioral propriety, but also emphasized “rectifying one’s clothes” and generally prohibited “strange attire.”

As the centuries passed and the term acquired more divergent and darker connotations, it acquired a sense of the mysterious, of something beyond ordinary comprehension, and it was therefore said that “things that cause people not to be able to fathom them are called ch’i.” (Its employment to designate a mode of warfare—ch’i chan or “unorthodox warfare”—emphasizes this aspect of being unfathomable.) Similarly, it further came to characterize the uncanny and occult, especially in reference to ethereal events and ghostly phenomena.

An interest in difference, what is uncommon or not yet known, underlies the contemporary term for “curiosity,” hao-ch’i or “love of the unusual.” However, Confucius declined to speak about three things—spirits, images, and death—in order to preclude distractions from the present. His pronouncement came to heavily impact China’s official cultural orientation, consigning anything apart from the virtues, values, and rituals required to maintain social distinctions and court awesomeness not just to insignificance but to inimical status. However, from the Han dynasty onward, all things imaginative, esoteric, and supernatural, including ghost tales and bizarre stories, became popular among the realm’s less pretentious members.

Largely in accord with the thrust of Confucian prejudice, stories and materials considered too unusual (ch’i) and irregular for inclusion in the orthodox dynastic histories came to be preserved in works such as the voluminous T’ai-p’ing Kuang-chi compiled in 977 CE, and in the late Ming many of the bizarre tales that had always fascinated the populace were assembled into collections of ch’uan-ch’i or sagas of heroes and “tales of the unusual.” Although often bearing somewhat formalized titles such as Observations on Ancient and Contemporary Oddities (Chin-ku Ch’i-kuan),⁸ they vividly preserve China’s enthrallment with the esoteric and supernatural, with what is well termed