http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_Chonghuan

Whist reading the above article, I came across this:



I've never heard of that. I've read Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marsh and there were never any mention of such tradition. Anyone who can shed some light?

That doesn't sound very gentlemanly or honourable, if the story is indeed true.

I've not heard of such a tradition.

Mok

From what I've read of Chinese battles generals would try to piss off each other more often than playing the nice-guy act.

I remember reading of some Chinese generals who did it. I think there were two generals in 3 kingdoms or Jin dynasty period. One general was sick, and his enemy general sent him some medicine. The sick general actually took the medicine. When someone tried to stop the sick general from taking that medicine, the sick general said that the other guy was very honorable and wouldn't try to poison him. It turned out pretty well at the end. I saw this incident mentioned in Jin Yun's martial art novels. One of the general involved was named Yang Gu, and he was mentioned because his name sounds like Yang Guo. Later, I saw the same story somewhere else in a more formal historical essay. So I guess it may be true.

Greeting Zuo Zongtang

In my experience , after many years of interest in the conduct of Generals during these time periods I also have never heard of this tradition. This kind of activity would have resulted in the immediate contraction of an occupational disease, the treatment for which would have be the loss of each of their heads. Generals were always under suspect by the king of not being loyal. Even Sun Tzu complained about the Army Commissioner who questioned him about beheading an officer who disibeyed an order , The point being the King sent an Army Commisioner to accompany Sun Tzu because he wanted Sun Tzu under the warchful eye of a political agent ( Army Commissioner ) to watch among other things for signs of disloyalty. And friendship and any exchange of this type of correspondence would certainly trigger real or imagined suspicion of disloyalty, From what I read, the King's even had secondary spy network reporting on the loyalty of the Army Commissioner, if the Commissioner failed to raise the alarm in this case , the secondary and third reserve networks would soon have assured the epedemic outbreak of beheadment-ites was spread to include the Commissioner.

In summation it did not take much to bring suspicion of disloyalty on Generals or other high officials, this act would have be so considered and certainly if this were a tradition of friendship between Generals ,there would have beem a written trail.

So deep was the fear of disloyalty. multiple layer of spies checking one on another were common. And not just in China, the Romans of the time said :
“ Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" or Who will have custody of the custodians themselves?... or who will watch the watchers.

It’s generally correct when the emperor is suspicious and homicidal (as most of the emperors were, especially in Ming and Qing dynasties). The story of Yuan Chonghuan袁崇煥happened because his emperor, Chongzhen , was one of the most suspicious emperors in Chinese history and Ming dynasty had the most tight securities and surveillance in all of the imperial China (besides Qin after its reform). The primary problems were not that he answered letters to the Qing leader, but more because the alleged content of the letters. Basically, he lost the spy war as well as the war in the Ming court between the eunuchs and the scholars. If he had publicized the contents of his letters to the Qing leader and able to prove it, he would solved one of his problems. However, he also had other problems that caused the Ming emperor to kill him, but that was another story.

It was not unusual for Chinese generals to write and receive letters from the enemy generals as long as the letters and communications were done in public. In addition, such actions were also used as a form of psychological warfare in the Sun Tze’s Art of War tradition. Generally, one general wanted to show friendliness to another general so that he could recruit the enemy general for his own king/emperor. A lot of times, the emperor himself had expressed wishes to want to do so. These types of cases happened generally during more chaotic times when kings and emperors were busy recruiting talented people. Especially in the times of warring states and 3 kingdoms, many generals and strategists were related to each other or were classmates when they were young. Communications between generals were not unusual. The brother of Shu Han’s Zhuge Liang worked for Eastern Wu. I am pretty sure they did write letters to each other.

The generals I mentioned before were羊祜 Yang2 Hu4 of Jin Dynasty and Eastern Wu general Lu4 Kang4陆抗. They were enemies for many years. Yang was responsible to conquer Eastern Wu, and Lu was the major general to oppose Yang. During the war, Lu Kang was sick, and Yang Hu sent him some medicine. Lu’s people asked him not to take it for fear of poison. Lu said, “Yang Hu is not the kind the person who would poison others.” (羊祜岂鸩人者.) Lu took the medicine and got well. There were no records of the emperor of Jin got mad at Yang Hu because of this incident. After Jin conquered Eastern Wu, Jin’s emperor said, “It was all Taifu Yang’s work.” (“此羊太傅之功也.”)