The Mandarin-duck formation
The wokou favored two-handed long swords and were fierce in single combat; Ming troops fighting one on one were sure to lose. Qi Jiguang’s solution was to abolish single combat: teams of twelve — a rattan-shield man to guard, a "wolf-brush" man (a long bamboo hung with branches) to tangle the enemy’s blade, spearmen to thrust, short-sword men to fill in — with the whole team punished jointly if the leader fell. Individual skill was replaced by organized cooperation, and the pirates’ single-combat edge vanished at once — nine victories at Taizhou, with the Qi Family Army’s dead in single digits. Beating genius with a system: this is the core idea he left military history.
A marquisate was never my aim
As a youth Qi Jiguang wrote a poem in the margin of a military manual: "In a small retreat I rest at ease a while, an old vow of concern for the times… I call for wine to bow to my guests, and wave the whisk as we talk of war… A marquisate was never my aim; I wish only for the sea waves to be calm." The last line became the gloss on his whole life. He understood the rules of officialdom well, deliberately attaching himself to Zhang Juzheng to win the room to train his troops freely — and the moment Zhang Juzheng died, he was at once impeached, transferred, dismissed to his home village, and died without medicine at hand. An idealist who accomplishes things within the system needs a protector; the day the protector falls, the bill comes due all at once.