Xiangqi, or Chinese chess, was not invented one day by one person. It is more like a family recipe handed down for over a thousand years: every dynasty added a little and changed a little, and by the Song dynasty the board, the pieces and the moves had more or less settled into the game we play today. Let's walk that road together.
帥
將The name "xiangqi"
The word 象棋 (xiàngqí) is very old, but at first it did not mean today's game. It shows up in books from the Warring States period, probably meaning games played with ivory pieces, such as a board game called liubo (六博).
Another old name is 象戲 (xiàngxì). An emperor of the Northern Zhou dynasty wrote a book called the *Xiangjing* (象經) about the xiangxi of his day. Its rules were lost long ago, so nobody can say how close it was to modern xiangqi.
After the Tang and Song dynasties, xiangxi gradually became a general word for "war-themed board games". From roughly the Song dynasty on, "xiangqi" settled on the game we play now. What the 象 (xiàng) in the name really means is still debated: ivory, the elephant, or "symbol" (as in symbolic battle). There is no final answer.
Origin legends
A game this popular collects a lot of stories about who invented it:
- One story pushes it back to the mythical rulers Shennong, the Yellow Emperor or Shun.
- One story says King Wu of Zhou used it to plan battles while fighting the last Shang king.
- One story credits Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou, the author of the *Xiangjing*.
- The most famous one is about Han Xin: he supposedly invented the game while imprisoned, and the river across the middle of the board is the Hong Canal (鴻溝), where the armies of Chu and Han faced each other.
None of these can be proven. Han Xin's story is the best one, and it made "楚河漢界" (Chǔ hé Hàn jiè, "Chu River, Han Border") the most iconic four characters in xiangqi. As we'll see below, those characters were actually written on boards very late.
Tang dynasty: Baoying xiangqi
The earliest game we can be sure is related to modern xiangqi is Baoying xiangqi (寶應象棋) from the Tang dynasty. Baoying was a reign title of Emperor Daizong of Tang, and records from that time already show generals, horses, chariots and soldiers lined up on a board.
Another story says the Tang chancellor Niu Sengru added the chariots, horses, soldiers and cannons to the game. It comes from a much later book and is not very reliable, but it reflects something true: the pieces of xiangqi were added a few at a time. The game did not start with 32 pieces.
Song dynasty: today's form takes shape
In the Northern Song dynasty there was still more than one version. There was a "big xiangxi" and a "small xiangxi", with different numbers and names of pieces; one version even had a crossbow piece and no elephant.
From the end of the Northern Song into the Southern Song, the board became nine vertical lines and ten horizontal lines, the generals moved into the palace, and the setup of seven kinds of pieces, 32 in all, was fixed. That is basically today's xiangqi:
That era even had coins made for the game, with the names of pieces such as chariot, horse and cannon cast on one side. They are called xiangqi coins (象棋錢), a sign of how many people were already playing.
Near the end of the Southern Song there was an encyclopedia of daily life called *Shilin Guangji* (事林廣記). It contains two complete game records and one endgame puzzle, the oldest xiangqi records we can still read. Since then, xiangqi has had a tradition of writing games down for others to study. To learn how a game is written down, see how to read xiangqi notation.
Ming and Qing: game books and the four famous endgames
During the Yuan dynasty and the early Ming, xiangqi was quieter; by the middle of the Ming it flourished again and left many books that people still read today:
- *Shiqing Yaqu* (適情雅趣): one of the most widely read Ming books, full of endgames and complete games.
- *Juzhongmi* (橘中秘, "Secrets Inside the Tangerine"): a late Ming book on attacking with the central cannon, the classic text for learning that opening.
- *Meihuapu* (梅花譜, "The Plum Blossom Manual"): a Qing book that teaches Black how to meet the central cannon with the Screen Horses defence.
- *Baiju Xiangqi Pu* (百局象棋譜, "One Hundred Xiangqi Games"): one of the most popular Qing endgame books.
The Qing dynasty also produced several big endgame collections, and four positions from them are known as the "four famous endgames": Seven Stars Gathering (七星聚會), Earthworm Subdues the Dragon (蚯蚓降龍), Wild Horse Plows the Field (野馬操田) and A Thousand Miles Alone (千里獨行). They look simple, but the calculation goes on and on, and they are still used for training today.
The central cannon and the Screen Horses come back in the xiangqi openings article.
When "Chu River, Han Border" appeared on the board
Many people think the river must say "楚河 漢界". In fact, on old boards the river was mostly left blank. Writing those four characters there only became common from the 1920s and 1930s.
Some boards write something else in the river, most often a couplet: "觀棋不語真君子，起手無回大丈夫" ("A true gentleman watches in silence; a real man never takes back a move"). Xiangqi sayings explains what it means. The names of the other parts of the board (the palace, the river, the pawn line) are in the xiangqi board.
Modern times: from teahouses to sport
In the Republican era there were already tournaments big and small, including matches between regions. In 1956 xiangqi was officially made a sport in China and the first national individual championship was held in Beijing. From then on it had organised competitions, ranks and professional players.
In 2008 xiangqi was added to China's national list of intangible cultural heritage. Today it is played well beyond the Chinese-speaking world, especially in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, with world and Asian championships. It is often named, together with chess and Go, as one of the three most widely played board games in the world.
Its relatives
- Korean janggi (장기): generally thought to have branched off from xiangqi. Its pieces are also round discs with Chinese characters, but it has no river and the elephant and cannon move differently. Korean players learning xiangqi mix the two up more than anyone.
- Japanese shogi: also has pieces named "king", "rook" and "bishop", but the rules are very different (for example, captured pieces can be dropped back onto the board). It is less like xiangqi and closer to the ancestors of chess.
- Chess: generally thought to share a distant ancestor with xiangqi, which is why both have chariots/rooks, horses/knights and soldiers/pawns. The big differences: xiangqi pieces stand on intersections, the board has a river and palaces, and a player with no legal move loses in xiangqi but draws in chess.
Who came first among these relatives is still debated, so treat it as a fun topic rather than settled fact.
FAQ
Who invented xiangqi?
No single inventor is known. Xiangqi grew out of several older "xiangxi" games and took its modern form in the Song dynasty. Shennong, King Wu of Zhou and Han Xin are all legends.
Does "Chu River, Han Border" really come from Han Xin?
One story says the river stands for the Hong Canal between the armies of Chu and Han, hence the name. But writing those words on the board is a modern habit; on old boards the river was usually blank.
How old is xiangqi?
Counting from Baoying xiangqi in the Tang dynasty, about 1,200 years; counting from the Song dynasty form, eight to nine hundred years.
Why do Red and Black use different characters?
So you can tell whose piece it is just from the character: Red's 帥 and Black's 將, Red's 傌 and Black's 馬. The full table of all seven pieces is in xiangqi pieces.
Try it yourself
A thousand years of stories can't beat playing a game yourself. Play xiangqi online against the computer, with the same starting setup passed down from the Song dynasty. If you don't know the moves yet, read about the xiangqi pieces or the xiangqi rules first; to learn about the game from the beginning, go back to the Chinese chess home page.
