Stratagem No. 26 第二十六计 Proximate stratagems (并战计)
Point at the mulberry, curse the locust tree
Literal
Point at the mulberry and curse the locust tree.
Scold one person, or confess one small fault, so the real audience hears the warning without being named.
Source line
大凌小者，警以诱之。刚中而应，行险而顺。
Traditional 大凌小者，警以誘之。剛中而應，行險而順。
When the stronger overawes the weaker, warn them in order to lead them. Firm at the centre and answered; he walks into danger and yet things accord. This is the voice of the hexagram Shi (The Army).
Icons working translation — draft, pending review
The two clauses are the Judgement essay on the hexagram Shi (The Army): a firm central line is answered, and one walks through danger because the rest comply. Discipline here is delivered sideways, warning one listener so that another, who is also listening, corrects himself and follows.
三十六计 · Chinese Wikisource edition (public domain)
Meaning
Point at the mulberry and curse the locust tree means the rebuke the room needs to hear is aimed at someone, or something, just to the side. A direct order has already failed, and a bribe would only make suspicious people more suspicious. The commentary’s remedy is to commit an apparent fault of your own, or to blame a third party’s fault, and let the real audience take the warning in the dark. The warning is a disguised way of leading. The great are steering the small, and the small are not to feel grabbed.
The hexagram Shi is an army, not a salon: danger below, compliance above, a strong officer in the centre whom the rest answer. So the same move is a commander’s tool. You make an example where an example can be made, and the people you cannot yet command hear it. Later readers file any public punishment here. The text is pickier. It wants the rebuke indirect, because a frontal threat, aimed at men who do not yet accept your authority, confirms their doubt. The mulberry is the surface. The locust tree is the listener.
The story
Zou Ji and the flatterers 邹忌讽齐王纳谏
Legend
The stratagem book names no case. The clean classical specimen of its method is older than the proverb. In the Zhanguo ce, Zou Ji of Qi, a tall and handsome minister, asks his wife, his concubine, and a guest whether he is better-looking than Lord Xu of the north city. All three say yes. He then sees Lord Xu and knows that he is not. He sits with the discrepancy. His wife agreed because she loved him, the concubine because she feared him, the guest because he wanted something. He takes that small, slightly shameful discovery to King Wei of Qi and says the court is the same household, only larger.
The palace loves the king, the ministers fear him, and in every direction someone wants a favour. Nobody will tell him an ugly fact. King Wei, in the anecdote, does not punish the flatterers. He prices the truth: the highest reward for a criticism to his face, the next for a written remonstrance, the next for a complaint overheard in the market. A year on, the story says, people had nothing left they dared not say, and the criticism dried up because the faults had been heard. Zou Ji had pointed at his own mirror. The locust tree was the court. He never named a minister.
That is ‘commit an apparent fault of your own, in order to warn someone else in the dark’, which is the commentary’s sentence. It is a set piece, not a dated dispatch, and the book of stratagems does not cite it. It remains the method. A direct attack on the king’s vanity would have been the order that fails and the bribe that raises suspicion. The household story let a ruler overawe his own circle without being told, in public, that he was a fool. The army version is the same angle of speech, used on men who do not yet obey.
Zou Ji’s audience is a set piece in the Qi strategies of the Zhanguo ce rather than a dated chronicle, it is older than the four-character proverb, and the stratagem commentary describes the method without naming a speaker.
Sources
- Zhanguo ce 战国策, Qi strategies, Zou Ji remonstrates with King Wei
Myth check
Often illustrated with Sun Tzu executing two of the Wu king’s concubines during a drill, that anecdote is in Sima Qian’s biography of Sun Tzu, it is not in the Art of War, and it is public military law rather than a sideways warning. The text here wants the listener to take the point without being the person named.
Modern application
A manager who cannot yet command a sceptical room does not open with ‘you are the problem’. She tells yesterday’s incident on another team, or her own bad call, in enough detail that the room recognises its habit, and she stops before the moral. The people who needed the warning supply it. A bribe, a bonus waved at the same moment, makes them wonder what they are being bought not to see. The commentary’s order of moves is: warning first, and the warning indirect.
Public life uses the mulberry constantly: a speech about a foreign scandal, a joke about a rival party, a review of a junior’s small error, all of it audible to the senior who will not be named. It works while the listener can pretend he found the lesson himself. The moment you wink, it becomes an insult, and the hexagram’s ‘compliance’ disappears. Indirect is a discipline, not a sneer.
Takeaways
- Aim the rebuke one step to the side.
- Use your own small fault as the example.
- Do not bribe people you have not yet led.
How to counter it
When a superior tells a long story about someone else’s mistake, or about their own, in a meeting where one person is the obvious subject, you are the locust tree. Decide whether the lesson is true before you decide whether to resent the method.
Questions
What does point at the mulberry and curse the locust tree mean?
It means aiming a rebuke at one person, or at your own small fault, so that the real audience corrects itself without being named. The commentary recommends it when direct orders have failed and rewards would only raise suspicion. The mulberry is the surface target. The locust tree, a Chinese scholar tree in the original, is whoever is meant to hear.
Is this stratagem from Sun Tzu?
No. It is not in the Art of War. A famous Shiji story, Sun Tzu drilling the Wu palace women and executing two favourites who laughed, is often attached to it. That story is about enforcing a direct order. This stratagem is the opposite angle: an indirect warning, of the kind Zou Ji used on King Wei of Qi in the Zhanguo ce.