Night was falling when the Wei general Pang Juan caught up at Maling.

It was a narrow mountain road, with rough, obstructed ground on either side. By the road stood a great tree. A patch of its bark had been stripped away, baring the white wood, and something was written there. It was too dark to read. Pang Juan had his men strike a fire and held it up to see.

Before he had finished reading, ten thousand crossbows fired at once from the slopes on either side.

The Wei army fell into chaos, its units losing one another. Pang Juan knew that his wits were spent and his army beaten, and he cut his own throat. Before he died he said: so I have made that brat's name after all.

The words on the tree were: "Pang Juan dies beneath this tree." The man who wrote them was sitting in a covered wagon in the Qi army. He had no feet, and his face was tattooed.

His name was Sun Bin.

1. Between E and Juan

Sun Bin was born between E and Juan, in western Qi. In the biography I wrote that he was a descendant of Sun Wu, born more than a hundred years after him.

Sun Wu's story I put at the start of the same biography: a general who drilled the palace women of the king of Wu and beheaded two of the king's favorites. Sun Bin's story I set after it. Of the two, one won the trust of the king of Wu through his art of war; the other, because he understood the art of war, first lost both his feet.

As a young man he studied the art of war together with Pang Juan. Who their teacher was, and where they studied, I found no reliable record, so I did not write it.

2. Two Feet

Later Pang Juan went to serve Wei and became a general under King Hui of Wei.

He knew that in ability he was no match for Sun Bin. So he secretly sent for Sun Bin to come to Wei.

Sun Bin came. Pang Juan, afraid that he was the better man and consumed with envy, used the law to have him convicted: both his feet were cut off and his face was tattooed. Pang Juan's plan was that he should stay hidden from then on and never be seen.

It was the most thorough way one man could deal with another: not to kill him, only to make him a convict. A man who had suffered mutilation, with characters on his face and no feet to walk on, could not hold office or lead troops, and so would never compete with him again.

Pang Juan calculated a great many things. He did not calculate that a man without feet can still sit and give advice.

3. The Qi Envoy in Daliang

One year an envoy from Qi came to the Wei capital, Daliang.

Sun Bin, a convict, secretly went to see the Qi envoy and put his case to him. The envoy thought him extraordinary, hid him in his carriage and smuggled him back to Qi.

How a convict slipped past his guards to meet a foreign envoy, and how the envoy got him out of the city, I do not know. I wrote only five characters: smuggled him in the carriage to Qi.

In Qi, the general Tian Ji admired him and treated him as an honored guest.

4. Three Classes of Horses

Tian Ji often raced horses against the princes of Qi, betting heavily.

Sun Bin saw that the two sides' horses were not far apart in speed, and that each side's horses fell into upper, middle and lower classes. He told Tian Ji: just bet heavily, and I can make you win.

Tian Ji believed him, and bet a thousand pieces of gold against the king and the princes.

When the race came, Sun Bin said: set your lower team against their upper team, your upper team against their middle team, and your middle team against their lower team.

When the three heats were run, Tian Ji had lost one and won two, and he took the king's thousand in gold.

The horses were the same horses. Only the order had changed.

So Tian Ji recommended Sun Bin to King Wei of Qi. The king asked him about the art of war and made him his teacher.

5. The Strategist in the Covered Wagon

Later Wei attacked Zhao. Zhao was in danger and asked Qi for help.

King Wei of Qi wanted to make Sun Bin his general. Sun Bin declined: a man who has suffered mutilation cannot be a general.

So the king made Tian Ji general and Sun Bin his strategist, seating him in a covered baggage wagon to make plans for Tian Ji.

Tian Ji wanted to lead his troops straight to Zhao. Sun Bin said: you do not untangle a snarl of thread by yanking at it; you do not separate two men fighting by joining the fight. Avoid the enemy's strength, strike where he is empty, and once the situation is blocked it will untie itself. Now Wei and Zhao are attacking each other; Wei's best troops must all be abroad, and those left at home are the old and weak. You had better march straight on Daliang, seize its roads and hit it where it is empty. Wei will be sure to let go of Zhao and come home to save itself. So in one move we lift the siege of Zhao and wear Wei out.

Tian Ji took his advice. The Wei army did withdraw from Handan, and on its way back it met the Qi army at Guiling and was badly defeated.

Later generations called this battle "besieging Wei to save Zhao." Those words are not mine, but the idea is what I recorded.

6. Thirteen Years Later

Thirteen years later, Wei and Zhao together attacked Han, and Han appealed to Qi in alarm.

Qi again sent Tian Ji at the head of an army, and again it marched straight on Daliang. When Pang Juan heard the news, he left Han and hurried back, but the Qi army had already crossed the border and moved west into Wei territory.

Sun Bin said to Tian Ji: the armies of the three Jin states have always been fierce and brave and look down on Qi; Qi has long been called cowardly. A good commander follows the enemy's frame of mind and leads him where he wants him. The art of war says that a forced march of a hundred li in pursuit of advantage costs you your leading general, and a forced march of fifty li brings only half your army to the field.

He had the Qi army, once inside Wei, dig cooking fires for a hundred thousand men on the first day, cut them to fifty thousand on the second, and to thirty thousand on the third.

Pang Juan pursued for three days, watched the fires shrink day by day, and was delighted: I always knew the Qi army was cowardly; three days inside our borders and more than half their soldiers have deserted.

He left his infantry behind and, with only his light, picked troops, pressed on day and night at double pace.

7. The Words on the Tree

Sun Bin reckoned his pace: he would reach Maling at dusk.

The road at Maling was narrow, with obstacles on both sides, a place for an ambush. Sun Bin had the bark stripped from a great tree and wrote his sentence on the white wood. He picked the best archers in the Qi army, ten thousand crossbows, to lie in wait on both sides of the road, and gave the order: after dark, when you see a fire raised, shoot all together.

What followed is what I described at the beginning. Pang Juan did arrive beneath the tree that night, saw the writing on the white wood and raised a fire to read it.

The fire that lit up those few characters also showed the hidden crossbowmen where to aim.

Qi pressed its victory, routed the Wei army and captured Shen, the crown prince of Wei, and took him back to Qi. From then on Sun Bin's name was known throughout the world, and his art of war was handed down.

8. Accounts That Do Not Agree

I wrote about the battle of Maling more than once in the Shiji, and the versions are not all the same.

In the biography, I wrote that the battle of Maling began with Wei and Zhao attacking Han, and Qi coming to Han's rescue. In the Hereditary House of Wei, I wrote that in the thirtieth year of King Hui, Wei attacked Zhao, Zhao appealed to Qi, and King Xuan of Qi followed Master Sun's plan to save Zhao and strike Wei. In the Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan, Qi sent Tian Ji and Tian Ying as generals, with Master Sun as strategist, to save Han and Zhao by striking Wei.

Whether Qi was saving Han, or Zhao, or both, the materials I had said different things. I did not make them agree; each chapter follows its own source.

Pang Juan's death differs too. The biography says that, knowing he was beaten, he cut his own throat. The Hereditary Houses of Wei and of Tian Jingzhong Wan say only that "the general Juan was killed" and "they killed its general Pang Juan," without saying he took his own life.

The Hereditary House of Wei also records an episode the biography lacks. When Wei sent out its army, Crown Prince Shen was made supreme general. As the army passed Waihuang, a man of Waihuang named Xu advised the prince: if you win, you will still only possess Wei; if you lose, Wei will never be yours. The prince agreed to turn back. But his charioteer said: to march out at the head of an army and then turn back is the same as being defeated. In the end the prince fought the men of Qi at Maling, was beaten and taken prisoner.

The same battle, in the biography, is Sun Bin's victory; in the Hereditary House of Wei, it is the defeat of a crown prince who knew he should not go and could not turn back.

More than two thousand years later, a batch of bamboo slips came out of Western Han tombs at Yinqueshan, in Linyi, Shandong. Among them was a text on the battle of Guiling, titled "Capturing Pang Juan." By its account, Pang Juan was captured by Qi at Guiling. That does not square with what I wrote, that he died at Maling thirteen years later. The slips are another transmitted account, written later, like my book; with only these texts, who is right cannot be settled.

9. Eighty-Nine Chapters

Sun Bin's art of war was still in circulation in my time.

More than a hundred years after I finished the biography, Ban Gu compiled the bibliographic treatise of the Hanshu, and among the military writers he listed two Masters Sun: The Art of War of Master Sun of Wu, in eighty-two chapters, and Master Sun of Qi, in eighty-nine chapters. Yan Shigu's commentary says that Master Sun of Qi is Sun Bin.

Later, Master Sun of Qi was lost. People read only Sun Wu's thirteen chapters, and some came to doubt whether Sun Bin had ever written a book of his own, or even whether Sun Wu and Sun Bin were two different people.

Among the Yinqueshan slips were both texts matching Sun Wu's thirteen chapters and another group of texts about Sun Bin's deeds. The editors named the second group the Art of War of Sun Bin. Two Masters Sun, each with his own book: on that point there is at least physical corroboration. How these slips relate to the eighty-nine chapters Ban Gu listed is still unclear.

10. I Too Was Punished

I wrote about Sun Bin with a private motive.

In a letter to my friend Ren An, I listed a series of men: the Earl of the West, imprisoned, worked out the Book of Changes; Confucius, trapped between Chen and Cai, made the Spring and Autumn; Qu Yuan, banished, wrote Encountering Sorrow; Zuo Qiu lost his sight, and so we have the Discourses of the States; Master Sun had his feet cut off, and his art of war was set in order. All these men had something pent up inside them and could not carry their way through, so they recounted the past with an eye to those who would come after.

When I wrote that letter, I had already suffered castration.

After his punishment, Sun Bin could not be a general and could only sit in a wagon giving advice; after mine, I could no longer stand in the court as I once had, and could only finish this book. We were both "men left over from punishment." Those words were Sun Bin's own, spoken to decline the post of general.

Yet at the end of the biography I did not speak only well of him. I wrote that people say those who can do it cannot always explain it, and those who can explain it cannot always do it. Master Sun planned for Pang Juan with perfect clarity, yet could not save himself early from the punishment.

He calculated the very day Pang Juan would reach Maling, but not the letter that once invited him to Wei.

Coda

I have never seen that tree on the road at Maling. Where it grew, later generations argue without end.

What I recorded is a line of writing on a tree, and a man coming close with a fire held up.

The man who wrote it sat in a wagon and could not see the tree. What he was calculating was one man's pride: the fewer the fires, the greater the pride; the greater the pride, the faster he would march; the faster he marched, the sooner he would arrive, and the darkness would fall just in time.

Before he died, Pang Juan said: so I have made that brat's name after all.

Of the man who made his name, I found no record of what came after. When he died, and where, I do not know. What remains are the three classes of horses, the covered wagon, the cooking fires that shrank day by day, and the words he said himself: a man who has suffered mutilation cannot be a general.

Sources and editorial boundaries

1. Core source: Shiji chapter 65, the joint biography of Sunzi and Wu Qi, the Sun Bin section (from "More than a hundred years after Sun Wu died, there was Sun Bin" to "Sun Bin's name became known throughout the world, and his art of war was handed down") and the Grand Historian's closing comment. Wording was read on 2 November 2026 in the Kanripo text of the Shiji, KR2a0001 (tls edition); printed editions were not checked, no modern translation was copied, and no page numbers are given. The tls text carries no commentaries, and none are used here. 2. Cross-checks: Shiji chapter 44, Hereditary House of Wei, the entries for the eighteenth and thirtieth years of King Hui (including Xu of Waihuang's advice to Crown Prince Shen); chapter 46, Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan, the Guiling and Maling passages under Kings Wei and Xuan; chapter 130, the Grand Historian's postface ("Master Sun had his feet cut off and discoursed on the art of war"); Hanshu chapter 62, the letter to Ren An ("Master Sun had his feet cut off, and his art of war was set in order"; the Wenyuan Pavilion text writes the character for "feet" as 脚, a variant of 腳, which is used here); Hanshu chapter 30, the bibliographic treatise, military strategists ("The Art of War of Master Sun of Wu, 82 chapters"; "Master Sun of Qi, 89 chapters," with Yan Shigu's note "Sun Bin"). Shiji from Kanripo KR2a0001 (tls edition), Hanshu from Kanripo KR2a0007 (Wenyuan Pavilion Siku quanshu edition), read on 2 November 2026; printed editions were not checked, and no page numbers are given. 3. The Chinese version ends with the classical wording of the key passages retold here, as read in the Kanripo editions; printed editions are still to be checked. 4. Dates: the battle of Guiling falls in the eighteenth year of King Hui of Wei and Maling in his thirtieth year (Hereditary House of Wei); the biography says "thirteen years later." Converted by the Wei reign chronology of the Shiji's Table of the Six States, these are 353 and 341 BCE. The Shiji's Warring States chronology differs from the Bamboo Annals and other sources, and the conversion is still to be verified. 5. Han or Zhao: the biography has Wei and Zhao attacking Han, with Qi saving Han; the Hereditary House of Wei has Wei attacking Zhao, with Qi saving Zhao; the Hereditary House of Tian Jingzhong Wan has Qi saving Han and Zhao. All three are left standing. That chapter places Guiling under King Wei and Maling under King Xuan, and records Tian Ji fleeing Qi under King Wei and being recalled to his former position in the second year of King Xuan ("宣王召田忌復故位"), so he leads the army again after his flight; how these reigns are dated is not pursued here. On Pang Juan's death, the biography says he took his own life, both Hereditary Houses that he was killed. 6. Yinqueshan slips: among the slips excavated in 1972 from Han tombs at Yinqueshan, Linyi, Shandong, is a text on Guiling, "Capturing Pang Juan," which says Pang Juan was captured there; the editors named a group of texts on Sun Bin's deeds the Art of War of Sun Bin. This follows standard accounts of Yinqueshan Han mu zhujian, vol. 1 (Wenwu, 1985); the book and its plates were not seen, and the title, transcription and naming are still to be verified. Doubts since the Song about Sun Bin's book or about Sun Wu and Sun Bin being one man follow a standard survey of scholarship and were not checked against the original works. 7. Inferences and limits: the Shiji does not say who taught Sun Bin and Pang Juan, and the later Guiguzi legend is not used. Sun Bin's death and burial are not recorded in the Shiji. "Besieging Wei to save Zhao" is a later phrase, not found in the biography. The modern locations of Guiling and Maling are disputed, so no coordinates are given. How a convict evaded his guards to meet the Qi envoy is not recorded and has not been invented. The section "I Too Was Punished" is an association made in Sima Qian's narrative voice; reading the letter to Ren An together with Sun Bin's phrase "a man left over from punishment" is the editor's arrangement, not a comparison Sima Qian himself made. No dialogue or inner thoughts have been invented.