Stratagem No. 06 第六计 Winning stratagems (胜战计)
Make a sound in the east, strike in the west
Literal
Sound the east, strike the west.
Threaten one point so loudly that the real blow lands where the defence has just emptied.
Source line
敌志乱萃，不虞，坤下兑上之象。利其不自主而取之。
Traditional 敵志亂萃，不虞，坤下兌上之象。利其不自主而取之。
The enemy’s will is confused and gathered in disorder, and they do not expect you. This is the image of the hexagram Cui (Gathering), Kun (Earth) below and Dui (Lake) above. Profit from their loss of self-command, and take them.
Icons working translation — draft, pending review
Earth below and lake above is the hexagram Cui, Gathering. The word for gathering also sits inside the phrase for the enemy’s confusion. The line does not say that every feint works. It says to strike when they have clumped together in the wrong place and can no longer decide for themselves.
三十六计 · Chinese Wikisource edition (public domain)
Meaning
Make a sound in the east and strike in the west means a feint that moves the defence, followed by a blow at the place the feint has emptied. The sound has to be credible enough to pull men, money or attention. A gesture they can ignore is only noise. The strike has to be ready before the sound is made, because the gap does not stay open. Once they understand that the east was theatre, they will run west, and a late blow meets them coming back.
The manual is unusually severe about when the move is allowed. If the other side is confused and cannot choose, the feint can win. If they are still able to read which threat is the real one, the same move is a way of announcing your plan and then walking into the defence they have prepared for it. East and west are any pair of alternatives: two gates, two clauses, two products, two candidates. The geography is the least of it.
The story
Zhu Jun at Wan, 184
History
In 184, during the Yellow Turban rising, Han Zhong held Wan, the seat of Nanyang, after earlier leaders of the local revolt had been killed. Zhu Jun, a Han general, had too few men for a plain assault on the wall. The Book of the Later Han says he widened his siege lines, built ramparts, and raised an earth mound so he could look down into the city. He then beat the drums and attacked the southwest. The defenders massed there.
Zhu Jun himself took five thousand picked men to the northeast and got over the wall. Han Zhong fell back to the inner city and asked to surrender. Zhu Jun refused, arguing that a surrender now would teach rebels to fight when they were winning and yield when they were not. The inner position then proved too desperate to storm. He loosened the ring. Han Zhong came out, his army lost its cohesion, and Zhu Jun broke it and pursued for tens of li. The feint opened the outer wall. It did not, by itself, end the fight.
The stratagem commentary sets a failure beside this success. In 154 BC, in the revolt of the seven kingdoms, Wu troops rushed the southeast corner of Zhou Yafu’s camp. Zhou Yafu fortified the northwest. The king of Wu’s best troops then struck exactly there, and could not get in. They had made a sound in one direction and struck in the other, against a commander calm enough to choose. The manual’s verdict is that the stratagem wins only when the enemy’s will is already disordered. Used on a reader of feints, it is a way of losing.
Zhu Jun’s feint is in Fan Ye’s Hou Hanshu; Zhou Yafu’s reading of the same move is in Sima Qian’s Shiji, chapter 57.
Sources
- Fan Ye, Hou Hanshu 后汉书, biography of Zhu Jun 朱儁
- Sima Qian, Shiji 史记, ch. 57 (Hereditary House of Zhou Bo)
Myth check
Feints are discussed in the Art of War. This four-character stratagem, and the warning that it fails against a calm enemy, belong to the later Thirty-Six Stratagems. The manual itself calls it a dangerous plan.
Modern application
A negotiation uses this whenever one clause is argued with great heat so that another clause, the one that moves the price, passes in the shade. A product launch does it when the public noise is about a feature the competitor will copy, while the real change is in distribution. The requirement is the same as in the manual. The audience of the noise has to be unable, for a little while, to ask which threat costs them more.
Sport makes the pattern obvious, which is why good defences stop treating the shout as the play. A run to one side is information only if the defence must honour it. If they have a second man watching the quiet side, the sound has failed before the strike. The counter is structural: never let one alarm empty the only reserve. Someone stays on the point that was not announced.
Takeaways
- Make the feint loud enough that they must answer it.
- Have the real blow already in place before you make the noise.
- Do not use it on an opponent calm enough to choose.
How to counter it
When one threat is suddenly very loud, reinforce the quiet point before you reinforce the noisy one. Zhou Yafu’s answer was to prepare the corner they were not attacking.
Questions
What does make a sound in the east, strike in the west mean?
It means a deliberate feint. You threaten one place so the defence rushes there, then you hit the place they have left. The classical line limits it to an enemy already confused and unable to decide. At Wan in 184, Zhu Jun drummed an attack on the southwest and took the northeast wall with five thousand men.
When does a feint like sound in the east fail?
When the other side can still choose. In 154 BC Wu troops demonstrated at the southeast of Zhou Yafu’s camp and then attacked the northwest. He had already fortified that corner, and they did not get in. The stratagem manual uses this to say the move defeats itself against a commander who is not confused.