Introduction

The deepest of all the [Chinese] games is one with more than two hundred pieces, white and black for each side, on a board with more than three hundred squares.... The mandarins have become so absorbed in this game that some of them occupy most of the day playing it, each match lasting more than one hour. And those who are good at this game, even if they have no other ability, are appreciated by everybody and invited everywhere, and some are chosen as masters to teach this game.

MATEO RICCI, On the Entrance of the Company of Jesus and Christianity into China, 1610

The art of Go began in China and was transmitted to our country by Grand Minister Kibi. Since that time it has spread, and now everybody plays. Monks who have a talent for it play Go with women and become their lovers. People pass through the world worrying about the moves just as if they were members of the Go Bureau. They put their own lives in jeopardy out of concern for the lives of their stones. Though these addicts are not Buddhist monks, they make do with but one meal a day, and though they are not yamabushi priests, they sit up all night as if waiting for the sunrise.

YAMAOK A GENRIN, an Edo period (1603–1868) essayist

These games were little dramas, in structure almost pure monologues, reflecting the imperiled but brilliant life of the author's mind like a perfect self-portrait.

HER MANN HESSE, The Glass Bead Game, 1943

JULY 8, 2010. That was the day I discovered that I could play Weiqi better than a ten-year-old in China. In 2010 I spent three weeks taking classes at the Wenbo School for children (the Wenbo Weiqi Training Center, Wenbo weiqi peixun zhongxin) and its summer school in a different location. In the first week, most of the children were on vacation and the school offered only one beginning and one lower-intermediate class. Much to my surprise, and even more of a shock to my teachers, I turned out to be the strongest player in both classes. Mrs. Wang, the accountant, head administrator, and joint owner of the school with her husband, quickly learned of this. She then began to bring in stronger players, who normally came to the school for private lessons, to test my mettle. When I defeated the first three of these opponents, Mrs. Wang displayed her boundless enthusiasm and began searching in earnest to find me a worthy adversary.

Playing Weiqi in China I suffered the disadvantages of having had no formal training and growing up in a culture that does not commonly play Weiqi—I didn't purchase my first book to study the game until I was thirty-eight years old. To be fair, I had several advantages in these games as well. The most obvious of these was that my classmates were, on average, ten years old. Second, as often happens when I play Weiqi in China, my opponents often started our games in an overly aggressive fashion because they assumed that an American would not recognize the traps of a beginner. Perhaps most important, as word spread of my victories, a growing number of students, teachers, and staff came to watch. This was a tremendous load to bear for a ten-year-old who was attempting to uphold his country's honor. It was very little pressure for a forty-five-year-old American who was so far past his Weiqi prime that the only thing he could do was surpass startlingly low expectations.

After my second day of classes, Mrs. Wang marched in a new opponent to challenge me. He was a stern and focused nine-year-old with a 3-duan amateur rating and therefore already a better player than most people would become in their lifetimes. At this point the room was packed full of spectators, including the teachers, several students, and even the female staff who usually showed no interest in the game. My opponent, who had earned a reputation for being something of a Weiqi prodigy, was small in stature but radiated natural intelligence and had honed killer instincts for the game. His intense stare seemed to penetrate the board—an entirely different feel from the other somewhat fidgety students I had played against up to that point. He quickly took the lead. After I conceded my loss halfway through the game he stood up, turned around without a word, and, heedless of his mother's admonition to say good-bye, walked out of the room without a backward glance. I felt as if I had met Bobby Fischer's reincarnated spirit in the Weiqi world, and I tried to suppress a smile.

THE GAME OF WEIQI

Weiqi is a board game that originated in China and was already well known in the time of Confucius (551–479 B.C.). Referred to as Go in the United States, Igo in Japan, and Baduk in Korea, the word Weiqi is made up of two Chinese characters; wei (to surround) and qi (logic game). The appellation "surrounding logic game" vividly evokes Weiqi's primary goal, which is to try to take one's opponent's pieces by surrounding them while simultaneously accumulating additional points by encircling empty space on the board. Today, the People's Republic of China (PRC), Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are the epicenters of the Weiqi universe, although, with the advent of the Internet, it has a steadily growing fan base in the West as well.

I refer to Weiqi as a Chinese game but, in much the same way that the Chinese origins of gunpowder and paper have become largely irrelevant in today's globalized political economy, Weiqi now belongs to several nations. Japan's nearly four centuries of Weiqi supremacy, South Korea's dominance in this sphere from the mid-1980s to approximately 2008 when China became a serious contender, and Taiwan's strong presence in international competitions, have so advanced the theory and practice of the game that it has been transformed into something very new.

Weiqi's popularity in China is often part of a choice to embrace a lifestyle that evokes nostalgia for gentry scholars in imperial times. Its long history has resulted in contemporary dreamscapes that draw on images of noblemen and intellectuals, generals and emperors who played the game. This imagery makes a particularly strong statement in the PRC, where elite culture was dismantled in favor of a new communist utopian movement.

Weiqi embodies mainstream traditionalist ideals in an age in which many people have abandoned the past in favor of more globalized opportunities. Middle-class and elite markers of distinction, including learning English, playing the piano, and studying abroad, are more often than not immersed in Western symbolism. Weiqi's association with historical elite culture aligns it with Chinese tradition. In doing so it offers a very different marker of elite status...