Stratagem No. 07 第七计 Enemy-dealing stratagems (敌战计)
Create something from nothing
Literal
From nothing, something is born.
Repeat a false show until it is believed, then put the real thing in the place the show prepared.
Source line
诳也，非诳也，实其所诳也。少阴、太阴、太阳。
Traditional 誑也，非誑也，實其所誑也。少陰、太陰、太陽。
It is a deception. It is not a deception. The thing that was a deception is made real. Lesser yin, greater yin, greater yang.
Icons working translation — draft, pending review
The three terms are a sequence, not a hexagram name. A small falsehood comes first, then a falsehood so complete that the enemy trusts it, then the real stroke, which occupies the place the falsehood has prepared. What began as nothing has to become something, or the trick only amuses them.
三十六计 · Chinese Wikisource edition (public domain)
Meaning
Create something from nothing means turning a pure bluff into a real action by way of repetition. A single lie is seen through. The same lie, repeated until the other side has built a habit around it, stops being examined. Then the content changes and the habit does not. The classical line is careful: the deception must cease to be a deception. Straw that only ever falls like straw teaches the enemy nothing except that you are short of men. Straw followed by men is the stratagem.
The phrase is older than the manual, and it comes from a different argument. A Daoist line says that the ten thousand things are born from what is, and what is is born from what is not. That is a claim about how things arise. The stratagem borrows the words and makes them a drill: show the false, enlarge the false, replace the false with the true. Anyone who quotes it as mysticism, or as permission to invent facts with no second step, has changed the subject.
The story
Zhang Xun’s straw men at Yongqiu, 756 张巡守雍丘
History
In 756, during the An Lushan rebellion, Zhang Xun held Yongqiu against Linghu Chao, a Tang officer who had gone over to the rebels. The New Book of Tang places the famous device in the middle of that siege, when the city was short of arrows. Zhang Xun had straw bound into more than a thousand human shapes, dressed them in black, and at night lowered them down the wall on ropes.
Linghu Chao’s troops shot at the figures and kept shooting. Only after a long time did they see that the men were straw. Zhang Xun hauled them back. The history says he gained several hundred thousand arrows. That figure is the book’s, and numbers of this kind in a battle biography are not a count one can audit. The method did not stop at the collection. He later lowered real men at night. The besiegers laughed, decided it was the same trick, and did not stand to arms.
Five hundred volunteers then cut into Linghu Chao’s camp, burned the tents and the ramparts, and the pursuit, the history says, ran for more than ten li. The nothing had become something: the false bodies taught a habit, and the habit hid the living men. Zhang Xun did not win the war at Yongqiu. He held the place, and the next year he died in the defence of Suiyang. The stratagem is one night’s device inside a losing campaign, which is why the histories can record it without turning him into a magician.
The straw men and the night raid are in the New Book of Tang’s biography of Zhang Xun; the arrow total is that book’s figure.
Sources
- New Book of Tang 新唐书, biography of Zhang Xun 张巡
Myth check
The straw boats with which Zhuge Liang is said to have collected Cao Cao’s arrows are a scene in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a novel. The historical straw figures are Zhang Xun’s, at Yongqiu, in the Tang histories. The Daoist phrase about being born from nothing is not this drill.
Modern application
A team that always sends a draft no one is meant to sign can, on the day it matters, send a real offer in the same wrapping. A player who always fakes in one direction can, once the defender has stopped honouring the fake, stop faking. The pattern needs the earlier, cheaper repetitions. Without them the real move looks like what it is, and meets a real defence. With too many of them, and no real move, you have only trained the other side to laugh.
The abuse is obvious and common: a claim repeated until an organisation treats it as background, with no intention of ever making it true. That is rumour, and it collapses the first time someone checks. The stratagem’s own sequence forbids the collapse. Lesser yin, greater yin, then yang. If you cannot produce the real thing on the night they stop watching, do not start the show.
Takeaways
- Repeat the false show until it becomes their habit.
- Change the content, not the wrapping, on the night you act.
- Do not begin a bluff you cannot turn into a real move.
How to counter it
Treat a repeated harmless display as a rehearsal, not as a joke. The night it looks exactly like the last five nights is the night to stand to arms.
Questions
What does create something from nothing mean in the 36 stratagems?
It means a deception that is repeated until the enemy trusts it, and is then replaced by a real action in the same form. The classical line runs from a small falsehood to a complete one, and then to the true stroke. At Yongqiu in 756 Zhang Xun lowered straw men to draw arrows, then lowered real soldiers, and the besiegers did not arm.
Is create something from nothing the same as Zhuge Liang borrowing arrows?
No. Borrowing arrows with straw boats is an episode in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, fiction of the fourteenth century. The historical device of straw figures used to collect enemy arrows belongs to Zhang Xun, defending Yongqiu in 756, and is told in the New Book of Tang.