If you travel to nearly any Chinese city in the summertime, you will see people, mostly men
wearing T-shirts, sitting out on the sidewalks on low chairs in the shade，playing a game with large round disks of wood. Xiangqi dates back as early as the Warring States period. While experts have different opinions as to who created Xiangqi and how it is linked to Western chess, there is no doubt that by the Tang Dynasty Xiangqi was a popular game in China.And in the 20th century both Sun Yat-sen and Zhou Enlai were big fans of the game.
And, though it may look quite a bit different than Western chess, Xiangqi is actually quite similar in what the pieces can do and how the game is played. Like Western chess, the object of the game is to capture the other player's "king".
Unlike Western chess, instead of placing the pieces in squares, the pieces are placed on the intersections of lines. Another big difference between Western chess and Xiangqi is that there is a large empty space in the middle of the board, which the elephants cannot cross.This space refers to an area in China where Liu Bang and Xiang Yu had a life-or-death war. The war was so influential that "the Chu River and the Han Boundary" has become a metaphor (隐喻) referring to any boundary between two opposing armies. When the Chinese people today see this name on the board, the battle scenes come to their mind, as though they are surrounded by thick smoke, able to hear the beating of war drums.
A. Actually, in Xiangqi he is just a general.
B. During the Qing Dynasty its popularity grew.
C. It is called "the Chu River and the Han Boundary".
D. The game is called Xiangqi, a game of ordinary people.
E. There are many differences between Xiangqi and Western chess.
F. An intense battle is about to take place on this small chessboard.
G. Several sayings related to Xiangqi are in common use in China today.
