wǔ bīng
Also rendered: The five weapons (keeps the old list and its number) · The five arms (shorter, and it loses the classical set) · The weapons of war (general, and it drops the five)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
The comparison that opens the chapter and gives it its argument. The Yellow Emperor protests that a needle is a small thing, and Qi Bo answers with a question: what in the world is greater? Only the five weapons — and the five weapons are the preparation for death, not the implement of life. The move is rhetorical and exact at once: the weapons are larger, but their office is to kill, while the needle, smaller than any of them, is the instrument by which the state is governed and the people kept alive. The chapter then raises the stakes: a man is the counterweight of heaven and earth, and cannot be left out of the reckoning. The five weapons are therefore not an aside about war but the measure against which the needle’s worth is taken.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| This site | the five weapons | the text's own count |
| Literal | the five arms | exact, and it is vague |
| Clinical | the five classes of weapon, which kill | explanatory, and it states the contrast |
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