Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Xiangqi talk

Translation of an interesting article by yzp in Guangdong Xiangqi website :

Recently Chinese Chess is not red hot enough, for many reasons. Well established traditional tournaments (brand name) are too few, this is one of the reasons. At the moment, apart from some regular tournaments such as the Asian and World Championships, plus a handful of Teams and Individuals competitions, such other tournaments having real influence are still a rarity. Take the "5-Rams Cup" for example, which can be considered as the top brand name, yet it is a creation from the 80's. "Jiazhou Cup" is around for several years now, has yet to achieve greater influence, time will tell whether it can take up its position as a brand name with long years tradition. The "Masters Tournaments" lack the ability to attract better attention, though the fact that they can create Grandmasters' norms is a good point. "Yinli Cup" has good reputation, with more than ten years tournaments background, unfortunately this year the tournament is not organised anymore. Most of other tournaments seemed bursting out in a while then disappeared without trace. In Weiqi, there are many traditional tournaments on world scale. In Xiangqi, even tournaments at national level are just a handful, many old brand names are lost, as for new brand names, these need time to be established properly. With limited battle grounds, heroes with great power and abilities, though numerous, are left fuming, beating their bare chests. The Xiangqi enthusiasts and fans feeling the same. Seasons changed, time passed, tournaments are still not many and few, and even then, many players are not able to participate due to lack of qualification (according to organisers). Who knows in a year how many players not able to play in any tournament due to this problem? The situation for the enthusiasts and fans is similar, it is waiting and waiting, they are presented with the same few tournaments to watch, the same few faces to see, how can one expect Xiangqi to be red and hot ?

Some friends may say, during the 50's and 60's, there were not very many tournaments, was not Xiangqi active and attracted good attention? Yes, indeed, in the 50's and 60's, one can consider it as Xiangqi first prosperous period, one of the reasons for this good situation was that, after the establishment of New China, players got a new lease of life from the old chaotic environment, thus it is easy to understand the cause. There were many popular chess matches of challenge, and tournaments of all kind, with initiative from all concerned. Later, the National Xiangqi Tournaments were instituted, this in turn helped to raise people's enthusiasm to a higher level. There was no need to measure the great enthusiasm and sense of new adventure of participants by the mere numbers of organised tournaments. We can make a high comparison by saying that the emotion and enthusiasm was like the launching of the first ever satellite. This effervescent state of Xiangqi fever lasted for several years, unfortunately, with the coming of the "cultural revolution", New China fell into the deep chaos valley, inevitably Xiangqi met disaster too. Obviously from the days when New China was established up to the start of the "cultural revolution", the prosperity of Xiangqi did not need the support of many traditional tournaments, just a few tournaments, and that was well enough for its popularity.

In the late 70's, after the "cultural revolution" was done with, China faced once again a time of reconstruction in history. Xiangqi also got a new life opportunity. After the 80's, the period of change and opening (of the country) was ushered in, Xiangqi once more sailed in highwind, tournaments of all kind mushroomed anywhere and everywhere, all were new, all fresh, everyone in such a state of Xiangqi excitement, one single tournament can attract ten of thousand of spectators, thus at that time it was sufficient with a few traditional tournaments in order to support Xiangqi.

The Xiangqi flames lighted during the 70's and 80's continued to give warmth and light to society until the mid 90's. It was with regret that as from late mid 90's, Xiangqi seemed gradually 'cooled down', some important tournaments which had potential to develop into established ones, were ceased one after another. New tournaments were fewer and fewer. With less and less tournaments, players and the public enthusiasm also diminished, promotion of the game suffered. By a coincidence of fate, at that critical moment, the globalization of Weiqi got accelerated, with several new tournaments created, attracting much of people's attention. Compounding this, under the pressure of the consumers economy, players started to question themselves, confused: "Can playing Xiangqi be profitable?" Thus, those who can "go to sea and test the water" did so, those who can change careers also did so. True, the number of players had not diminished, even possible on the increase, however, all kind of tournaments, especially the traditional one were going down. This meant that the seeds showned during the 70's and 80's were few to be able to grown up (after 1998, several high standard tournaments with years of organisation were ceased). The state of affair remained for such a long time, even today there is not much improvement. In this situation, how can Xiangqi be developed into the red and hot state of prosperity?

[continue...]
Right now, we have a once in a lifetime peaceful environment, with rapid economic development, greater number of players, aided by science and technology, the general level of the game constantly rising, why is it that Xiangqi still lacks the glitters we all expected of ? This is again because on the one hand, there are too few tournaments (of course there are deeper causes for the lack of tournaments, which we are not going to discuss here for the moment), on the other hand, the expectation of the publc is heightened, too much of a good thing repeated many times inevitably produced some kind of tiredness. People are not well satisfied with just a few tournaments held annually, they want to see tournaments with higher standard and greater prize funds (if these tournaments become traditional so much the better). However this hope and expectation in reality is not getting complete fulfilment, hence a sense of deep dissatisfaction, of wanting to put things right in place by themselves. There is obviously contradiction. Let us imagine for a moment, if all the high standard tournaments such as 'King of Chess Tournament', 'Grand Chess Sage Tournament', 'Celebrity Tournament', 'Yinli Cup Tournament', 'BGN Tournament' etc were to have continued, similar to the '5-Rams Cup Tournament', and ideally with a few more traditional tournaments added to the list, then it will be extremely difficult indeed for the game of Xiangqi not to develop into the hottest item available at all time !

No comments: