The Wu State of Ancient China and Sun Tzu 

He does such a great job! Thanks for acknowledging that! Listening to his podcast has helped me in my studies and especially when it comes to pronunciation.

Bob so I’m horrible at pronouncing words like that and I’m not going to lie his podcast has helped me a lot. I’ll look at a word, pronounce it, listen to how he pronounces it and then I hate myself for five seconds, hahahaha!

I follow the CHP podcast. What I like is that Lazlo has this perfect pacing, balancing details with brevity. He's great for advanced beginners who are roughly familiar with the timing and locations of Chinese history but still lack the ground level feel of a very distinct and unique civilization.

Seems really good.

Andrew Boehmer they are both so awesome!!!!!!

This coming from a European Boemhauer name? WTF do you know about Chinese pronunciation?

Michael Braeutigam I think that one is done by Olliebye.

Fernando rocha: First ask, is “The Art of War” a compilation or a coherent text?

Yes, he was a real person. There were several history records mentioned him by name. According to "Shi Ji" (Historical Records), he brought 13 chapters of his military theories to the King of Wu around BC 512, and led the army of Wu with General Wu Zixu conquered the capital of Yue State around BC 506. "Shi Ji" also wrote a very brief biography of him. Another very interesting thing is that he was a great strategist but probably not very good at being a general. In history records, he alway joined the battle with General Wu Zixu and never led an army of his own.

The Art of War from Sun Tzu has been studied since it was written. If anyone that might now about a Chinese movie I saw a few yrs back but can not remember the name. It was an Excellent movie where it always seemed like General Sun Tzu was within the opposing armies grasp to finish him off, but General Tzu fought off his army starving, succumbing to disease, to him becoming victorious at the end by some genius military tactics. One of the best movies I ever saw!

Mayz - I kinda disagree with you about him not being a capable General as he had to be better than average or even good to defeat a larger army, even if he joined General Wu Zixu, they still had to agree to pull a Mohammad Ali Rope A Dope by drawing the opposing army away from both attacking the King of Wu as well as dictating where to fight the enemy from an advantage, by splitting up his & Gen Zixu’s smaller armies to deceive, bait, trap & destroy a much larger army. That’s from what I learned, but I defer to you & your knowledge about that. If you may happen to know about an awesome movie about that war, I assume, I think it’s the one I saw yrs ago & one of my favorites, I just wish I remembered the name. PS. Gen Qi from late Ming Dynasty who fought off Japanese Pirates, depicted in God of War was Incredible as well!!

Sun Tzu lived during the Zhou Dynasty. State of Wu was founded by one of the family royal of Zhou dynasty. State of qin,han,Wei,qi,Jin,Zhu,etc..all of them came from the Zhou dynasty

Don’t they speak it in Suzhou too?

Masada2: which thread of their ancestry? Denisovan? Neanderthal? Australian Aboriginal?

Zoe Porphyrogenita - I would like to know where the Chinese originated. I will say right off I believe in a Flood and a dispersal of tribes from Mesopotamia in all directions to populate the earth some 4500 years ago.

Masada2: Noah and his wife must have been very different in appearance, to have both white and black children.

Masada2 wasn’t there a theory that each continent was spread through by one descendent

@@masada2828 that Noah flood thing was absolute bullshit. There are prehistoric cultures unrelated to the Near East that are older than 5000 yrs old. The Chinese Xia, Andean Civilization, and so many more names I cant name on top of my head.

Once in the 80s, but I did not enjoy it 😂

En garde, I'll let you try my Wu-Tang style

more like fujian dialect

@@johanqian1858 Sun Tzu books was written for Ngu Goh/ State of Wu where the official language was Wu Chinese. Wu chinese conquered the southern part of China thus obviously influenced southern dialects. Wu readings was the earliest form of Chinese readings adopted by Koreans and Japanese. In Japanese, there are 3 form of Kanji readings and the earliest reading is Go-on (Wu sounds/Wu readings). So Classical chinese certainly not like fujian dialects.

@@johanqian1858 No, it does not. Fujian dialect sounds very modern.

If you ask me, Classical Chinese sounds more like the modern Khmer language rather than any variety of modern Chinese. You can easily tell the Austroasiatic influence.

​@@mikewallice2795 Wu did not conquer the southern part of China, only the area around the Yangtze River Delta. And Wu people was not Sinitic, but indigenous tribes such as Gong-Wu/Gou-Wu (Old Chinese: Krong-Ngwaa, Krok-Ngwaa) ruled by a Sinitic aristocracy from the Yellow River region. The Japanese did take a set of Kanji reading from the Eastern Wu, which is a different state from the earliest Wu kingdom (Eastern Wu is a splinter state from the Han Empire). Hokkienese dialects split from Old Wu/Ngo in the medieval times due to Sinitic Wu-Yue migrations into Fujian.