Wei Qi
November 18, 2008
When I arrived in China I flipped through the TV channels and came across the only 2 that I would even think of watching: CCTV9 - the English language channel and CCTV5 - the national sports channel. On CCTV5 on Saturday afternoon I would see this board game that kind of looked like checkers being played and analyzed. Not exactly riveting stuff but it did pique my curiousity as to what this game actually was.
I have since found out that the game is called WeiQi in Chinese (Go in Japanese and Baduk in Korean). The reason I know this now is because Carter has enrolled in a WeiQi class at his preschool and he absolutely LOVES it. He thinks the teacher is very funny and cool but I am not sure how much of the game he is learning. He has shown me that the traditional way of holding the game pieces is between index and middle finger so he has learned something.
I also know that he is HeiQi (black pieces) and the reason he chose them is because they are dark like Batman The Dark Knight.
I started to research the basic concepts and rules of the game and found that in fact it is a very complex game involving such concepts as liberties, captures, kills, and eyes. Apparently the game has been played for 3000 years in China and to this day experts are still analyzing and trying out new strategies. Not sure how much we hope Carter will learn at the preschool level but ya gotta start somewhere.
Want to know more about it .. watch the YouTube video below
Really hate to say this but … I gotta ‘go’
