三十六计
sān shí liù jì
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 三十六計
The Thirty-Six Stratagems, a classic Chinese list of ruses for war and politics; loosely, every trick there is. Best known from the saying that, of all thirty-six, running away is the best.
Ba mươi sáu kế: tên gọi chung ba mươi sáu mưu kế cổ của Trung Quốc dùng trong chiến trận và chính trường; cũng chỉ đủ mọi mưu mẹo. Quen thuộc nhất qua câu “ba mươi sáu kế, chuồn là thượng sách”.
Register: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 062 (2026-11-13). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): Hán-Việt reading 计/計 = kế; etymology of “tam thập lục kế” = 三十六計 · Vietnamese cognate: Idiomer entry “tam thập lục kế” (tam-thap-luc-ke). Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Equivalents & related
Common questions
What does “三十六计” mean?
The Thirty-Six Stratagems, a classic Chinese list of ruses for war and politics; loosely, every trick there is. Best known from the saying that, of all thirty-six, running away is the best. Literally: thirty-six stratagems
Is “三十六计” formal or informal?
三十六计 is generally neutral.