Last week we were looking at Xiangqi through the eyes of Jim Png the man behind , and this week he continue to delve into his Herculean effort to promote the board game he loves.
So for those completely unfamiliar with Xiangqi, simple starter sets are available on ebay.ca for under $20 from China, since shipping is still reasonable from there.
However, set pieces are typically checker-like and Chinese 鈥榣etters鈥� are used to differentiate the pieces. Learning the symbols on the pieces can frankly be far more difficult than learning the movement of pieces that are, in some cases different from western chess.
Png recognized that language was abarrier to the interest in the game.
鈥淒efinitely,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 have been to chess conferences in China and have mingled with the grandmasters, masters et cetera. They have asked me similar questions. They were interested and curious why I needed to change everything into English.
I would usually tell them to look at it from the way International chess (IC), was spread in China. Back in the 1920s, Xie Xiaxun (a short autobiography in on his site), Xie was inducted into a local IC club in Shanghai by a Dane called Charles Kliene, whose grandsons or great grandsons I still have trouble locating. He learned about IC, and then subsequently translated and modified it into his Chinese version and taught the game to the local Chinese. No Xi Xiaxun, no Hou Yifan or other Chinese International Chess Masters or Grandmasters.
鈥淏ack to the topic of language 小蓝视频 a barrier, if Xie had not translated International Chess into Chinese and published it in his encyclopedia, the common folk would not have learned about it.
鈥淚n the same way, I tell the folks in China, would you go to learn English before learning International Chess, or would you simply pick up what is available in Chinese and learn the game?
鈥淚 think the same goes for Xiangqi. There have been efforts by earlier Xiangqi promoters and organizations, but the results seem to have been miniscule.
鈥淚 firmly believe that to promote Xiangqi, to share it beauty, you have to tell the West about its beauty in English. In most cases, nobody would bother to learn Chinese before trying to learn the game.鈥�
And by spreading the game to the West he hopes to ensure its long-term viability.
鈥淎nother thing about language 小蓝视频 a barrier; I hope to be able to preserve Xiangqi in a second language to ensure that it has better chances of 小蓝视频 passed down to future generations, that might not necessarily be Chinese,鈥� he said.
Of course the language barrier was also a barrier to the creation of the website.
鈥淒uring the initial years of writing about Xiangqi, the biggest hurdle was still the language,鈥� said Png. 鈥淭here was simply minimal translations for Xiangqi terms.
鈥淚 had to research the terms in Xiangqi, so that I could translate the gist to the best of my abilities and not lose its original history and culture. I used the stuff I was taught in med(ical) school. Oh, by the way, I am an orthopedic surgeon in the daytime but I do not do major surgeries now. I prefer simple outpatient work, minor surgeries and hope to spend my free time with my kids and Xiangqi.
鈥淥ver the years, my translations grew and I was able to collect them into a book. I sent my lexicon to Oxford University publishers but they rejected my work, and I decided to self-publish the book. So I learned how to write, format, and produce books and eBooks by myself and used Amazon as a platform to share my work. Eventually I published the Lexicon and translated several other books. I think I have about 20 publications on Amazon at last count over a span of four-five years.鈥�
鈥淭he books make peanuts and I would have earned much more continuing my daytime job but I never regretted it. Xiangqi is life to me.鈥�
聽But after all the efforts what has the response been to the English site?
鈥淚 moved the site in 2020 after deciding to cut costs. The Wysiwyg site was unable to meet my needs after there were about 2700 pages on my site. Everything was running too slowly,鈥� he detailed.
鈥淚 decided to learn Joomla and some simple coding, went to YouTube, self-taught myself, and with the help from some friends, built the new site from scratch. I think I have moved about 70 per cent of the stuff but I have chosen to condense some of my original work. There are now about 1000 pages to my site, and I am still going strong.鈥�
And sadly the site does not get the response he hoped for.
鈥淩esponse has been meagre and disheartening. I think it was because I did not know about how Google ranked stuff or that there were programs that helped you get to the top of their rankings,鈥� offered Png
鈥淎nd again, the lack of understanding of Xiangqi has made my work less known.
鈥淏ut I think I used to average about 250 people per day before I moved. I average slightly over 100 per day now, but YouTube followers have increased and so has my Facebook Channel. Book sales are growing steadily but I do not care much. Just focusing on doing what I think needs to be done.鈥�
Of course online is also a place to play, but has that enhanced opportunities for Xiangqi? 聽
鈥淰ery good question,鈥� noted Png. 鈥淵es, I think like what Thomas Friedman advocated, the world became flat after the internet.
鈥淏ecause of my work and commitments, it would be months or even years for me to be able to play over the board Xiangqi with an actual person. But I can do it using the various websites and apps.
鈥淵es, the internet and the availability of apps and websites has made Xiangqi much more accessible.
鈥淗owever, on the flip side of the coin, the surge of video arcade games or other online games is a major concern to me.鈥�
But online does mean exposure for Xiangqi.
鈥淢ajor tournaments are screened live on apps in China,鈥� said Png. 鈥淔or a big tournament or the major ones, there can be two-three million viewers at the same time on line just watching the important matches.
鈥淲hile it may seem to be a staggering number, I am worried because there are many more times the number of people playing different arcade or online games.鈥�
Does that mean the number of players is growing/staying level/declining?
鈥淚 think this would be a very complex question to answer,鈥� said Png. 鈥淎s mentioned earlier, Xiangqi is an interesting hybrid of competition/sport, culture and history. In terms of culture, theoretically, the younger Chinese generation would know about Xiangqi, naturally. They would also learn about it as part of their history, and this would apply to Chinese all over the world.
鈥淗owever, in terms of Xiangqi as a sport, I would need figures to back my assumptions. The number of professional Xiangqi players seems to have increased over the years, and the introduction of the internet would indeed have given Xiangqi a boost in terms of player population. However, perhaps like in International Chess, I believe this increase is not proportional to what it should be. I believe that a major fraction of the people that might have been regular Xiangqi players have switched to playing online arcade games in China. So that is why I believe that this question is hard to answer.
鈥淪o I guess my answer to your question would be; Yes, the number of regular Xiangqi players has grown in the past two decades from what I have observed, but, it has not grown proportionately. I would need numbers and stats to back this claim though.
鈥淥ne thing is for sure, the rise of arcade games or online games has impacted Xiangqi in more than on ways. Being a game itself, I hope that Xiangqi will not fall and continue to be handed down generation to generation.鈥�
Next week we look at a simple solution to help gamers learn and appreciate Xiangqi more quickly.
