Looking East: The Xiangpi Players
Visitors to China can catch a glimpse of its play in parks and on street corners, with aunties and uncles absorbed in plans of attack just as their forebears were thousands of years before them. The game being played is likely none other than Xiangqi or Chinese Chess, a passtime with more than two millennia of history.
Xiangqi, which means literally “elephant game” or “image game,” is a two-player strategy board game. It was first mentioned in “Chu Ci” or “Songs of Chu,” an anthology of Chinese poetry compiled in the 4th century BC. The exact origins of Xiangqi have always been contentious. Some scholars believe that Chinese Chess is a variation on International Chess, a game invented in India in the 6th Century BC. Others posit the opposite: that Xiangqi came first.
