Xiangqi
Whether you are seriously hooked on chess or casually
intrigued by it, you probably think of the tables in Cambridge's Holyoke Center
as the Boston area's one big outdoor chess venue. That's, after all, where the
Chess Master sets out his board a few tables down from his counterpart, the
redoubtable Chess Mister. That's where you can play both regular chess and
blitz, the high-speed version, most any day, for $2.00 a pop, against skilled
competition. (If you win -- it does occasionally happen -- you get your $2.00
back.) And that's where, if you're learning, you can find a teacher. Of course,
if you'd been bitten by the chess bug, you didn't need me to tell you about the
scene at Holyoke Center. You knew.
But if you knew, you probably thought that's all there is to
outdoor chess in Boston. If so, you were mistaken. There is another venue where
the game is played with at least as much passion and relish -- the game, that
is, if you're capable of wrapping your mind around the fact that chess speaks
more than one language.
I was trying to tell a friend about this other locale
recently, saying, "I'm back into chess. I go to Chinatown a lot, where
there's plenty of Xiangqi."
"Oh? I hope you're careful."
"Why? It's not dangerous."
"No? Didn't you just say there were plenty of
junkies?"
"Xiangqi", at least as I pronounce it, can come
off as "junkie" to an American ear, but I only meant to allude to
Chinese chess, which happens to be thriving in Boston. The Big Dig beggared
Massachusetts to the tune of twenty-two billion dollars, but in planting the
Rose Kennedy Greenway on space the Central Artery had occupied the Dig has been
a boon for Xiangqi. Chinatown Park opened at the southern tip of the Greenway
last year, and has been a magnet for lovers of the game -- mostly Chinese but
also other Asians, and lately, me.
I'll mention only to set aside the inevitable question about
the origins of chess. Did it begin in China, as some argue, and spread from
there to India, Persia, and, by means of Islam and the Arabs, to Europe? Or did
it propagate from its root in India, circa six century AD, toward both the east
and the west? It's an issue that stalemates the scholars.
What matters, though, is that Xiangqi is indubitably chess,
related to and seductively different than the Western variant, properly known
as international chess. At the moment, I'm hooked on the Chinese game. Whether
I'll ever work my way back to the chess I grew up with remains to be seen.
Right now, I'm tearing out old chess wiring and repurposing it for Xiangqi.
This summer, I've inadvertently positioned myself as a sort
of Xiangqi/ international chess portal. I set up a Xiangqi board in Holyoke
Center, mere yards away from the Master and the Mister, and am usually
surrounded in short order by Asians delighted to see their game in an
unexpected American setting, and ready to play. Many are students or tourists.
Few knew they could find Xiangqi, weather permitting, most any day in
Chinatown.
I've played in Chinatown, too, but suspect the regulars are
embarrassed about demolishing me as easily as they do -- for now, anyway -- and
maybe a little irked to be diverted from more rewarding competition. So I
mostly watch. I'm accepted as a member of the crowd assembled around the games,
though I lack the facility in Mandarin necessary to join the raucous debates
about moves. Xiangqi is a much more communal -- much more an "it takes a village"
-- kind of game than international chess. It's no breach of etiquette in
Xiangqi for an onlooker to reach down and revoke an objectionable move,
replacing it with his own, which might then, after due discussion, suffer a
similar fate.
Sometimes, after studying Chinatown Xiangqi, I shuttle back
to Harvard Square to play the game.
Whether or not Xiangqi goes viral in Boston, I am, at the
moment, a Xiangqi-bearing microbe. And Xiangqi might well go viral. The Beijing
Olympics may well provide just the boost the game needs to be globalized. The
Xiangqi world championships will take place in Beijing this October. Asians
will accord the games the kind of respect chess gets here only if it's on the
order of Bobby Fischer vs. Boris Spassky, or Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Blue.
Following on the Olympics, Chinese chess may blast into western attention
suddenly and for good.
I often wonder what Bobby Fischer might make of Chinatown
Park. Could he fail to recognize that the game being so vociferously enjoyed
and argued about was a variant of his beloved chess? I think that unlikely. I
think, after a double-take, he would have seen been enthralled.
If you care to try Xiangqi, here are several resources.
- elephantchess.com, where you can find sets that translate
the ideograms identifying Xiangqi pieces into more universally recognizable
forms.
Ultimately, though, if you want to play native Xiangqi
players, you'll have to make the leap to the ideograms. Don't worry. It's not
that hard.
Two books I refer to often:
- David Li, "First Syllabus on Xiangqi." This is
smart and helpful despite the author's need to editorialize about all the ways
in which he deems Xiangqi superior to tired old international chess.
- Sam Sloan, "Chinese Chess for Beginners." Sloan
is a rarity, both a highly (FIDE) rated international chess player, and a
Xiangqi player who has, he says, been accorded the title, "Foreign
Master" by Chinese chess authorities. Sloan's observations about the
differences between the Asian and European versions of the game are to the
point.
No comments:
Post a Comment