My Chinese is nowhere near good enough to read any classical texts, and has degraded a lot since college anyway. I’m curious about your impression of Sunzi’s writing style. My understanding is that many classic Chinese texts rely heavily on multiple meanings and associations of a word or pronunciation, making them very dense to interpret even for a trained scholar. Would I be correct in assuming Sunzi was writing for a less scholarly audience and used language that needed less unpacking?
Yes. In Sunzi’s writing, “armored vehicles” is a metaphor for armored vehicles, “crossbows” is a metaphor for crossbows and “supply lines” is a metaphor for supply lines.
My Chinese is nowhere near good enough to read any classical texts, and has degraded a lot since college anyway. I’m curious about your impression of Sunzi’s writing style. My understanding is that many classic Chinese texts rely heavily on multiple meanings and associations of a word or pronunciation, making them very dense to interpret even for a trained scholar. Would I be correct in assuming Sunzi was writing for a less scholarly audience and used language that needed less unpacking?
Yes. In Sunzi’s writing, “armored vehicles” is a metaphor for armored vehicles, “crossbows” is a metaphor for crossbows and “supply lines” is a metaphor for supply lines.