Hidden Order: Deconstructing Historical Games: Deconstructing Historical Games

Author: Wu Si
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-04-01
Features: A recompilation of "The Hidden Rules" and "The Law of Blood Price." Wu Si's writing is engaging and easy to read, yet his profound insights often leave one chilled to the bone, hard to swallow, and weighing heavily on the heart. Wu Si belongs to a small group on the mainland, but together they form a cultural foundation as vast and fertile as a plateau. The rediscovery of facts presented in this book confronts the realities we tend to overlook, and this revelation shocks us. The style of this book is primarily narrative, supplemented by background introductions, with various analyses and calculations interwoven. In my personal experience, this tripartite structure—narrative, background introductions, and analysis/calculations—is well-suited for dissecting human scenarios, which I call "dealing with the situation." If the subject is a historical game of chess, where the interactions between the parties involved must unfold sequentially, presenting a dynamic structure that evolves over time, then narrative naturally takes center stage. Analysis and calculation are tools for understanding or predicting outcomes and their equilibrium states. Background introductions help us step outside the situation, broaden our perspective across multiple dimensions, establish relationships between different times and spaces, and express the nesting and interweaving of multiple games.