The Warring States

I happened to be scrolling through Netflix some time ago and came across a movie titled The Warring States. I put it in my instant que and just left it there for a long time - a couple of months, maybe. Well, I finally decided to watch it the other night and was surprised and honestly, a a little disturbed by what I saw.

From the title and the oh-so-brief description that I read, I thought it was another retelling, or at least another story from, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms - the classic Chinese story of their warring states period. Well, not quite. Turns out it was more of a story about the classic-era military strategist Sun Bin, who did serve in the Qi court during the Three Kingdoms period. It's a bit of a tragic story, but I do recommend giving it a watch. He wasn't much in the way of a martial artist but he was a brilliant military strategist. That's kind of odd isn't it? Someone who knows all about strategy and troop movements but not a thing about how to fight!

Anyway, it turns out he was not only a real historical figure, but his treatise on the Art of War, long thought lost, had recently been rediscovered! Found in 1972, the long lost bamboo scrolls were found in the Shandong Province in China. An overview can be found on Wikipedia. Don't confuse this, or him though, with Sun Tzu. Even though it is thought that he was a descendant of the most famous military strategist.