information:classification
Guo Chong's five anecdotes

The Shu Ji (蜀記), by Wang Yin (王隱), recorded that sometime in the early Jin dynasty, Sima Jun (司馬駿; 232–286), the Prince of Fufeng (扶風王), once had a discussion about Zhuge Liang with his subordinates Liu Bao (劉寶), Huan Xi (桓隰) and others. Many of them brought up negative points about Zhuge Liang: making a bad choice when he chose to serve under Liu Bei; creating unnecessary burden and stress for the people of Shu; being overly ambitious; and lacking awareness about the limits of his strengths and abilities. However, there was one Guo Chong (郭沖) who dissented and argued that Zhuge Liang's brilliance and wisdom exceeded that of Guan Zhong and Yan Ying. He then shared five anecdotes about Zhuge Liang which he claimed nobody had heard of. Liu Bao, Huan Xi and the others fell silent after hearing the five anecdotes. Sima Jun even generously endorsed the five anecdotes by Guo Chong.

Pei Songzhi, when annotating Zhuge Liang's official biography in the Sanguozhi, found the five anecdotes unreliable and questionable, but he still added them into Zhuge Liang's biography and pointed out the problems in each of them. In his concluding remarks, Pei Songzhi noted that the fourth-century historians Sun Sheng and Xi Zuochi, given their attention to detail, most probably came across Guo Chong's five anecdotes while doing research on the Three Kingdoms period. He surmised that Sun Sheng and Xi Zuochi probably omitted the anecdotes in their writings because they, like him, also found the anecdotes unreliable and questionable.