Red Cliff (II)
Finally! Red Cliff (II) has hit the movie Screens in Singapore! I have to admit sheepishly that the number of movies I have watched in a year is countable with my fingers. Yet this is one such movie I am awaiting with rushing adrenaline for its launch.
Well that’s because I am an avid fan of The Romance of the 3 Kingdoms and Chinese Metaphysics too! I have already read the novel but yet can barely conceal my excitement over the chance to watch the Red Cliff (II) which is based on The Chronicles of the 3 Kingdoms, a variant of The Romance of the 3 Kingdoms.
One of the most talked about battle in either versions of the novel would be The Battle of the Red Cliffs. In this battle, warlord Cao Cao is leading his troops southwards to invade the land occupied by warlord Sun Quan. Cao Cao’s troops outnumber those of Sun Quan and warlord Liu Bei combined by many times. Hence, Sun Quan and Liu Bei were in an alliance to ward off the troops of Caqo Cao. In the runup to this lendendary battle, Liu Bei’s wise advisor Zhuge Liang was at Sun Quan’s camp to work out strategies of the alliance and warding off Cao Cao’s troops. The allies had devised an ingenious fire warfare to attack Cao Cao’s troops but what is not in their favor is that the North and North-Easterly winds at that time of the year means that shooting fire arrows will only result in the fire arrows turning back by the winds to burn themselves! It was the proverbial “almost but not yet ready”.
In either versions of the novel, there is not much variation in the classic scene of the legendary Zhuge Liang concocting his trick of borrowing Easterly & South-Eastly winds to aid the allies. Zhu Ge Liang volunteered to perform a ritual to the Heaven to borrow Easterly & South-Easterly wind. While the rest of the people in their alliance could not believe he has the power to ask for winds from the Heaven, nonetheless, they can only pin their hope on it because there is no way they could have ward off Cao Cao’s troops without the success of the fire warfare. Eventually Zhu Ge Liang succeeded and they successfully defeated Cao Cao’s troops to a hasty retreat.
While it seemed inconceivable how Zhuge Liang had the supernatural power to borrow winds from Heaven, there were clues abound the novel that he what he really did was to practice Chinese Metaphysics or more precisely Qi Men Dun Jia to an alarming level of accuracy and confidence.
We will be releasing our analysis of the event on why we believe he had used Qi Men Dun Jia to achieve this feat at our forum : http://fengshuiforward.com/forum/index.php/topic,669.0.html
Stay tuned.
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