Sunzi here means both an ancient scholar’s name and his works. Sunzi or Sun Wu was born in a border between Yanggu county east (Shandong province) and Fang county southwest (Henan province), in the Spring-Autumn Period of Cathay (770 BC-476 BC). We don’t know his exact date of his birth or death (approximately from 385BC? to 315BC?). He was much older than another Chinese scholar Zhuangzi (?369BC-286BC) as famous as Laozi. Perhaps Sunzi has been known for his works entitled The Art of War translated in various languages, such as English, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Czech and so on.

It was a coincidence that both Laozi (philosopher or thinker) and Sunzi (military genius) written in bamboo slips excavated respectively in Hunan and Shandong Province in 1972. One was unearthed by archeologists in Mawangdui (Horse-king-hillock), Changsha and the other in Silver-bird hill, Linyi County where all the bamboo slips with Chinese traditional characters telling us at least The Art of War was very popular at the West-Han dynasty (202 BC–Ad 1 or 8)

Sun Changqing was Sunzi’s another second name. At first he was a scholar belonging to Qi kingdom, writing a series of military works. He compiled 13 articles as a united one to dedicate to the King of Wu kingdom. King Wu paid much more attention to reading his works and learnt much from Sunzi’s writing. Thanks for Sunzi’s contributions, the King appointed Sunzi as a general of Wu Kingdom. With the help of Sunzi’s wisdom, Wu Kingdom won one victory after another, defeating Chu Kingdom thoroughly, completely. A series of military movements proved of Sunzi’s theory to be perfectly right as result of being combined with vivid practice in battlefields. Since then Sunzi had been famous and considered as a military god that could help all the army in invincible situation. All the Chinese people have treasured Sunzi’s ideology from generation to generation. Originally China was not a united country that was divided into several small kingdoms never stopping fighting against each other in the so-called Spring-Autumn period of time over 2800 years ago. Thus, it was necessary for every kingdom to have a military guide or a book in order to guarantee their decisive victory. Sunzi was a typical representative of military genius at that time.

There are different kinds of Sunzi’s copies handed down from the ancient times. Now let’s introduce the believable one in a few words.

In my opinion, Sunzi or The Art of War is a philosophical book rather than a military one. It’s full of universal rules or laws everybody met but not understood deeply as he did.