Chinese Reading Center

 孙子兵法 Sun Zi's Art of War

This 2,500 year-old book proves that while the weaponry has changed over time, the rules for successful warfare strategies have not. It is a surprisingly compact distillation of strategic principles that is still as useful today as it was when Sun Zi [Sun Tzu] first wrote it. Its principles were applied by the combatants of the "Three Kingdoms" period, Mao Tse-Tung, and the corporate warriors in the sales and marketing departments of today.

Notes on the Translation

The complete text of the Art of War is presented here with side-by-side translation. The English text of the translation is derived from the work of Lionel Giles (1910). To aid current bilingual readers, we have replaced the transliterated Chinese names from their original Wade-Giles form to their pinyin form.