Are Orthodox and Unorthodox Forces Fixed?

A fresh translation

Original text

Words and concepts

• Qi (奇), unorthodox or extraordinary
  A relational term for what departs from the expected disposition. It does not mean that a unit possesses a permanently “special” identity.
• Zheng (正), orthodox or regular
  The direct, established, or expected aspect of a disposition. English pairs such as “regular and extraordinary” are useful, but no pair removes the need to read how the terms change within the argument.
• Jiaoyue (教閱), training and review
  Instruction joined with inspection or drill. The passage assigns advance division to this practical setting.
• Xing ren er wo wuxing (形人而我無形)
  “Shape others while I remain without form,” a phrase drawn from the “Weak Points and Strong” chapter of the Sunzi.
• Linshi zhibian (臨時制變), directing change at the moment
  Responding when circumstances arrive, rather than mechanically preserving the labels used in instruction.

A military classic that reads another military classic

The Questions and Replies between Tang Taizong and Li Weigong differs from a manual that simply announces rules. It is arranged as a conversation. The emperor raises a problem, Li Jing replies, and earlier authorities are quoted, tested, narrowed, or rearranged. The received work should not be treated as a transcript proving that the historical Taizong and Li Jing spoke these exact words. Its dialogue nevertheless gives the text a distinctive method: military knowledge appears through argument about military books.

The exchange behind this excerpt begins with a precise question. Are qi and zheng assigned in advance, or are they formed as the occasion demands? The reply first cites a lost work associated with Cao Cao. When one’s forces are twice the enemy’s, one method is orthodox and one unorthodox; when they are five times the enemy’s, three are orthodox and two unorthodox. The speaker calls this only a rough account.

That qualification matters. Ratios are easy to teach because they can be counted before movement begins. The reply does not reject them as useless. It changes their status. They belong to an instructional arrangement, not to the deepest account of how qi and zheng work.

Why training needs visible divisions

Before a body of troops can transform, its members must recognize commands. The preceding sentences describe soldiers learning the method and subordinate officers becoming familiar with orders. During training, they identify flags and drums, divide and combine in turn, and practice two distinct methods. A division that looks rigid on paper can therefore serve a practical purpose.

The passage names that purpose with jiaoyue: teaching, drilling, and reviewing. Learners cannot practice an indistinguishable flow. They need signals, positions, and repeated changes whose boundaries can be recognized. Calling one disposition zheng and another qi gives the exercise an intelligible shape.

Yet the training label is not the final reality. That is the hinge of the reply. “Dividing them beforehand belongs to training and review.” The sentence does not say that advance division is false. It says where the division belongs. A classroom distinction can be valid in a classroom while becoming too narrow for the event it prepares people to meet.

After the drill, the distinction begins to move

Once training is complete, the ranks “know my method.” At that point the commander can direct them as a flock moves where it is driven. The image may sound dismissive to a modern reader, but the argument is not evaluating the intelligence of individual soldiers. It is describing a body that responds together. Signals no longer have to be explained from the beginning each time the direction changes.

The rhetorical question then dissolves the earlier boundary: “Who then distinguishes between the unorthodox and the orthodox?” A force may have entered the exercise under one label, but its role is not trapped there. What confronts the opponent as expected may become unexpected; what began as the extraordinary element may carry the direct engagement.

This is more demanding than merely concealing a reserve on a flank. The following exchange explicitly disputes definitions that bind qi to a later departure or a side attack. The speaker refuses to let timing or direction turn into permanent definitions. Neither “first” nor “later,” neither “front” nor “side,” is sufficient by itself.

“Shape others while I remain without form”

The passage then turns to the Sunzi. Its quotation does not come from the famous lines in the “Energy” chapter about qi and zheng producing one another like an endless ring. Those lines appear earlier in the same reply. Here the text reaches instead for “shape others while I remain without form,” language from the discussion of emptiness, fullness, and disposition.

That choice joins two parts of the Sunzi. The endless alternation of qi and zheng is not treated as verbal cleverness. It reaches its “highest point” when the opponent is induced to disclose a form while one’s own disposition cannot be fixed by the opponent. The categories matter through a relationship between observers, not through labels attached permanently to units.

“Formless” need not be turned into the supernatural. The line concerns what can be grasped and predicted. If an opponent can confidently say which element is orthodox, where the extraordinary force must appear, and what sequence will follow, then the transformation has already hardened into a pattern. The ideal described here denies that certainty.

The crucial contrast is not ordinary versus elite

Modern language invites a misleading shortcut. “Regular” can sound like ordinary line troops, while “extraordinary” can sound like an elite detachment with unusual abilities. Nothing in these sixty characters establishes such a personnel system. The text is concerned with roles within a changing disposition.

The same warning applies to moral meanings. Zheng can carry associations of straightness or correctness in other contexts, and qi can suggest deviation. Here, however, the pair cannot simply be mapped onto good and bad. Both belong to the commander’s method. Both may contribute to success, and the argument praises their transformation into one another.

Nor does “unorthodox” mean a miraculous trick that excuses preparation. The sequence runs in the opposite direction. Drill comes first. Soldiers learn signals, officers learn orders, and divisions are practiced. Only after that foundation has been established does the text imagine movement that the opponent cannot classify.

What the three statements do not prove

They do not provide a complete history of how Chinese military writers understood qi and zheng. The terms appear in many works and commentarial traditions. This excerpt records one argumentative reading within the received Questions and Replies.

They do not prove that the dialogue preserves the actual speech of Emperor Taizong or Li Jing. The work is traditionally framed around those figures, but strong doubts have long surrounded its authorship. It is safer to read the statements as claims made by the received text.

They do not abolish organization. The passage depends on prior instruction, clear signals, and knowledge of the method. “Without form” is not disorder, and responsiveness is not the absence of command.

Finally, they do not define every unexpected action as qi. The point is relational and dynamic. A surprise repeated until it is expected no longer occupies the same place in the opponent’s judgment.

Where the Questions and Replies departs from a slogan

Read alone, “the unorthodox and orthodox generate one another” can become a polished maxim. The Questions and Replies makes the problem less comfortable. It asks what instructors should actually teach, why they must divide what later becomes fluid, and how a commander moves from shared drill to an unreadable disposition.

The answer preserves both stages. Beforehand, divide for training. At the moment, direct the change. The apparent contradiction is the lesson. A distinction can be necessary for learning without becoming a cage for action.

This is why the excerpt earns its place beside the Sunzi rather than underneath it as a mere paraphrase. It does not only repeat older sentences. It builds a theory of reading them: ratios and paired drills are useful at one level, while the root principle lies in transformation that no fixed ratio can exhaust. It also explains why a useful instructional diagram may cease to describe the action once trained people begin responding to a changing opponent.

Source

Questions and Replies between Tang Taizong and Li Weigong (唐太宗李衛公問對), Upper Scroll, fourth exchange on whether qi and zheng are divided beforehand or determined at the moment. A Japanese woodblock text appears in book four of Hyōdai Bukei Shichisho Zenbun, books 1–7, corrected by Wang Huan (Osaka: Bunkindō, 1846). Waseda University Library, call number イ13 00931.