Campaigners › Strategists
Sun Bin
Qi strategist, a descendant of Sun Wu, who was maimed through Pang Juan's envy and later beat Wei at Guiling and Maling, where Pang Juan took his own life
Inside a tent at dusk, a low table holds a board of faint map-like lines with scattered black and white stones beside a feather fan, a lit lantern, an iron teapot and rolled bamboo slips, while one person sits with their back turned at the open flap, facing a river valley at sunset.
Sun Bin was a man of Qi and, according to the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), a descendant of Sun Wu; his real name is lost, and Bin refers to the mutilation he suffered. He studied military arts with Pang Juan, who, as a general of King Hui of Wei, knew himself the lesser man, lured Sun to Wei and on a false charge had his feet cut off and his face tattooed. Smuggled back to Qi, he showed the general Tian Ji how to win a horse race by matching his worst team against the opponent's best, and King Wei made him military adviser. At Guiling he had Qi march on the Wei capital to relieve the siege of Handan; thirteen years later at Maling he lured the Wei army on by cutting his cooking fires each day and ambushed it, and Pang Juan cut his own throat. Bamboo slips found in 1972 at Yinqueshan, Linyi, preserve his lost Art of War.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; Qi strategist of the mid-Warring States