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树上开花 (shu4 shang4 kai1 hua1) Defending with 'blossoms'

January 18, 2009, Sunday | Print Edition

A tree may look less attractive without flowers on its branches. But you can give it a dazzling display by attaching bright and colorful artificial blossoms.

An application of this stratagem in a battle is not to put on some eye-catching show but to deceive the enemy, making them believe you are stronger and more powerful than you actually are.

During the Three Kingdoms period (AD 220-280), Zhang Fei was known as an audacious general who had more brawn than brain. But it was Zhang who adroitly employed this "artificial blossoms" stratagem to deter an overwhelming enemy in one of the most famous battles in Chinese history.

In the early years, Zhang was serving Liu Bei, the ruler of the Kingdom of Shu Han, who was not quite a rival of Cao Cao, the ruler of the Kingdom of Wei.

In one battle, Liu was defeated by Cao and his wife and son went missing in action. So, while retreating from the battlefield, Liu and his troops moved very slowly because they were mixing with a large number of refugees. Meanwhile, the pursuing enemy was closing in very quickly.

So, Liu ordered Zhang to try to stop the Cao troops in order to give him and his followers more time to retreat to a safer place.

Zhang had a force of only about two dozen cavalry, but he had to fend off the attack by a charging enemy about one thousand times the size of his squad.

Zhang understood very well that no matter how brave and powerful he was, his men could never beat the odds. So he asked his men to tie tree branches to the tails of their horses and gallop the animals back and forth in the woods close to a river.

Meanwhile, he mounted his favorite black horse and waited in the middle of the only bridge on the river.

When Cao and his troops arrived at the river, they saw only Zhang guarding the bridge. But they also saw billows of dust rising from the nearby woods on the other side of the river.

Cao and his troops all knew how fierce and dangerous Zhang was, but they couldn't figure out why the ruler of Shu Han sent only Zhang to bring up the rear.

At the same time, Cao became suspicious of the activity in the woods. He feared his rival had set up a trap for his troops and had sent out Zhang as bait.

So he ordered his troops to stop advancing and, after a short standoff with Zhang, decided to back off. He planned to cross the river only after finding out what was going on in the woods.

Zhang had successfully stopped the enemy advance but, according to the story, he later burnt the bridge before retreating from the river. This tipped off Cao that he had been deceived by Zhang's "artificial blossoms" trick.

After all, Zhang was a fierce fighter, not a strategist.

Now and Then


 

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