If you ever get the chance to come to China, it will be well worth your while spending some time learning the rules of Chinese chess because watching chess games could vie for the ultimate China-watching activity.

 

Of course there are a lot of activities you could watch in Chinese parks. I'm probably within 500k of Beijing here, and if there's some corner of the People's Republic where they don't do T'ai Chi in the park it's not here. So you could watch that, or some other kind of kung fu or whatever like fan dancing, or geeky dancing like the hugely popular Chinese line dancing; or giant water brush calligraphy, using a walking stick with a sponge on the end to do temporary calligraphy with water; or shuttlecock hackey sack; or listen to the screechy, evocative ensembles and singing and so on. But I would love for you to see the unrestrained nature of life here as evidenced by chess ettiquete.

 

I think that when my brother and I played board games and card games as kids we had an austere attitude toward things like third parties giving advice. Well it would be hard to describe adequately how many types of crowd participation are accepted in chess games in Northeast China, and as far as giving advice goes, well that's sort of the reason why some people watch chess games here. There's always a crowd, I have literally never seen two people playing chess without others watching, and not only do they give advice and sternly remonstrate with the players after bad moves, occasionally they even reach over and just move a piece - and then the opponent just quickly moves before there's any chance for the player to assent or take the move back! Once I even saw a spectator move someone's piece with his foot.

 

It's a very tactile game. The done thing is to slam your piece down when you move. Yesterday players were shaking the other pieces off their spots sometimes when they moved, but apparently it's worth it. Players and spectators also often pat spots on the board where they are thinking of moving, or where they are afraid an opponent will move, while they think. This must telegraph some intentions but I guess there aren't many secrets here.

 

So you can imagine some of the scenes, with crowds leaning in to get a better view, everyone with a cigarette in hand. It's noisy, but I've never seen any disharmony at a chess game. People here are so tolerant, it seems they've given up caring about things that could produce full contact road rage or even a letter to the editor in the West and when it comes to yelling, pushing and dropping cigarette ash on a chess board, it's simply seen as normal behavior I guess; it provokes no reaction at all. Another interesting thing is that chess spectators and players are the only people I've found who don't immediately stop what they're doing and ask me where I'm from and how much I earn as soon as they see me. It's amazing, in any other context people even go as far as yelling "hello" in English out of moving cars, stopping and staring, and all the rest, but at chess games I really wonder whether people have actually noticed that I'm white. It's pretty refreshing.

 

All in all joining the crowd and watching Chinese chess is a good way to see how different our demeanor and habits are from those of the Chinese, and a great way to see Chinese men at play.