The qin on the city wall: Zhuge Liang's Empty Fort in the novel and in the histories

On the city wall a man sits behind the parapet in a crane-feather cloak and a silk scholar's cap. Two boys stand beside him, one holding a sword, the other a horsetail whisk. Before him are a qin and an incense burner, its smoke rising straight up.

Below the wall stands an army of a hundred and fifty thousand.

The commander reins in his horse and looks up. The city gates are wide open. A few townsfolk are sweeping the ground in the gateway, heads down, as if they had not noticed any soldiers. The man on the wall is playing the qin. The music is unhurried, and he is smiling.

The commander looks for a long time. Then he gives the order: withdraw.

Almost everyone in China knows this scene. Yet the official history of the period does not contain a word of it.

The scene in the novel

The scene comes from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo Yanyi), the 14th-century historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong, which retells the wars that followed the collapse of the Han dynasty in the early 3rd century. Chapter 95 is titled "Ma Su ignores advice and loses Jieting; the Martial Marquis plays the qin and repels Zhongda". The Martial Marquis is Zhuge Liang (181–234), chancellor of the state of Shu; Zhongda is Sima Yi (179–251), the leading general of the rival state of Wei.

After the loss of the pass at Jieting, Zhuge Liang is left in the town of Xicheng with only 2,500 men, and Sima Yi is closing in with 150,000. Zhuge Liang gives his orders: hide every banner; every soldier to keep his post in silence; throw open all four gates, with twenty soldiers at each dressed as townsfolk sweeping the street. He himself puts on the crane-feather cloak and scholar's cap and, with two boys, goes up the wall to "burn incense and play the qin".

Sima Yi reaches the city and "sees Kongming seated on the wall, smiling broadly, burning incense and playing the qin". Suspecting an ambush, he orders a retreat. His son Sima Zhao asks: what if Zhuge Liang has no troops and is doing this on purpose? Sima Yi replies:

Liang has been cautious all his life and has never taken a risk. Now he has opened wide the city gates; there must be an ambush.

The novel tells it superbly, and the Beijing opera version has been sung for more than a century. But it is a novel.

Not in the official history

The Records of the Three Kingdoms (三国志, Sanguozhi), compiled by Chen Shou (233–297) shortly after the period ended, describes Zhuge Liang's first northern campaign in 228. Ma Su was badly defeated at Jieting, and Zhuge Liang "removed more than a thousand households from Xixian and returned to Hanzhong": he evacuated the population of the county and fell back to his base. No Sima Yi, no empty city, no qin.

In fact Sima Yi was not on the western front at all that year. He was stationed at Wancheng in Jingzhou, far to the east, and in the first month of the year had just crushed the revolt of Meng Da. The whole of the Guanzhong region lay between him and Zhuge Liang. The Wei commander who faced the Shu army at Jieting was Zhang He. The two men did not face each other until the fourth and fifth northern campaigns, years later. In 228 Sima Yi could not have stood below that wall.

Guo Chong's version: an empty city, but no qin

Yet Luo Guanzhong did not invent the empty fort from nothing. It has an earlier source, inside the commentary to the Records.

Pei Songzhi (372–451), who wrote the great commentary on the Records in the 5th century, quotes a story told by a Western Jin man named Guo Chong. It is the third of Guo Chong's "five matters concerning Zhuge Liang". Zhuge Liang is at Yangping. He has sent Wei Yan east with the main army and kept only ten thousand men to hold the city. Sima Yi arrives with two hundred thousand and learns only when sixty li away (about 25 kilometres) how few defenders there are. Zhuge Liang

ordered the whole army to lay down its banners and silence its drums, forbade anyone to leave the tents, and had all four city gates opened and the ground swept and sprinkled.

Sima Yi suspected an ambush and withdrew.

Here are the empty city, the open gates and the sweeping, but no qin. Guo Chong's Zhuge Liang stays out of sight inside the city and makes no sound.

And Pei Songzhi rejects the story at once. At that time, he points out, Sima Yi was at Wancheng, with all of Guanzhong between him and Zhuge Liang, so the time and place cannot be made to fit. Guo Chong was an admirer of Zhuge Liang and his "five matters" were mostly hearsay. Pei refutes this one especially bluntly.

So the episode has three layers. The Records: nothing. Guo Chong: an empty city, which Pei Songzhi judges unreliable. Luo Guanzhong: Guo Chong's empty city, plus a qin.

Why add a qin

In Guo Chong's version Zhuge Liang hides inside the city in silence. Luo Guanzhong seats him on top of the wall, playing in full view of the enemy. With that change the story turns from gambling that the enemy will not dare to enter into overawing the enemy with composure.

The qin is the right prop, and it could only be the qin. A flute would sound like a taunt, a drum like a call to battle, and singing is not dignified enough. The qin's sound is quiet; the player must be calm in mind and steady in hand, and the slightest panic shows in the strings. That Zhuge Liang can play smiling before 150,000 men shows that he is sure of himself, and because Sima Yi hears no tremor in the music he is all the more convinced there is an ambush. The novel spells it out through Sima Yi's own words: Liang has always been cautious and never takes risks. The music is the evidence of that caution. A man who is gambling cannot keep his playing steady.

In Luo Guanzhong's hands, in other words, the qin is not an instrument but a lie detector, and what it tests is the player himself. Zhuge Liang passes.

There is one more layer. The qin was the instrument of the scholar. In the novel Zhuge Liang is pictured with a feather fan and silk cap, a scholar rather than a soldier. Having him take up a qin rather than a sword at the critical moment makes the point that he wins with his mind, not with force.

The qin in Beijing opera

From the novel the Empty Fort moved onto the stage, and the qin went with it.

The Empty Fort is a signature piece for the laosheng, the role type of the mature male scholar or official, and the aria Zhuge Liang sings on the wall, "I sit on the city wall gazing at the hills, and hear a clamour outside the city", is one of the most famous in Beijing opera. On stage there really is a qin set in front of him, but he does not play it: the actor's singing takes the place of the music. The aria, too, is all composure. He tells Sima Yi that there is no ambush in the city and invites him to come in, and Sima Yi becomes even less willing to try.

The opera goes a step beyond the novel. In the novel Zhuge Liang is gambling; on stage he sings to the enemy. In the novel the qin is a prop; on stage it becomes a posture. As long as Zhuge Liang is seated behind that qin, the audience knows he will not lose.

Real empty forts

History does record ruses of this kind, only with other heroes.

The Weishu, a history of Wei quoted in Pei Songzhi's commentary, says that when Lü Bu made a surprise attack on Cao Cao in Yanzhou and Cao Cao had few troops to hand, he "had the women man the battlements", and Lü Bu, suspicious, withdrew.

The Yun Biezhuan, a separate biography of the general Zhao Yun, says that by the Han River he "threw the camp gates wide open, lowered the banners and silenced the drums". The Cao army suspected an ambush and would not advance; Zhao Yun then beat his drums and counterattacked, and the enemy trampled one another, with countless men drowned in the river. This is often called the "empty camp" ruse, and it is the most credible empty fort of the Three Kingdoms period.

The Weilüe, another history of Wei, says that when Sun Quan attacked Wen Pin at Shiyang with fifty thousand men, Wen Pin simply lay down and did not get up. Sun Quan found this strange: Wen Pin was a famous general and would not behave so unless he had an ambush ready. Sun Quan withdrew.

All of these are better attested than Zhuge Liang's empty fort. None of them has a qin. The qin is a stroke that belongs to the novel alone.

Zhuge Liang and the qin

The Weilüe, quoted in the commentary, says that as a young man in Jingzhou he would sit at ease morning and evening, "often clasping his knees and whistling long": whistling, not playing. A qin piece called Liangfu Yin is associated with him, and his biography in the Records says he "liked to perform the Liangfu Yin", but that was a song he sang, not a piece he played, and the qin piece of that name today is a later attribution.

What can be said with certainty is this. By the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Chinese readers felt that a figure like Zhuge Liang ought to have a qin in his hands. Luo Guanzhong gave him one, and not a single reader found it out of place. That in itself shows where the qin stood in the culture: it was the natural equipment of a wise man.

A player's view

Qin players reading the Empty Fort often notice one detail: the novel says that Zhuge Liang played, but never says what.

That is the right choice. Had it named a piece, Liu Shui ("Flowing Water") or Meihua Sannong ("Three Variations on Plum Blossom"), the story would have become smaller, and readers would start wondering why that piece. The qin on the wall is not about the music but about the act of playing itself: not panicking when panic is called for.

Experienced players know that you cannot play well when you are tense. The fingers stiffen, the yin (吟, narrow vibrato) and nao (猱, wide vibrato) begin to shake, the rhythm falls apart. So for a qin player, playing on the city wall is not a myth but a concrete difficulty: can you hold a steady yin in front of a hundred and fifty thousand men? Zhuge Liang can. That is more remarkable than turning back the army.

For more stories of the qin in history, start with Xi Kang and Guangling San. That piece is real, and it too was played without panic when panic was called for.