Cross Cultural Chess

While wandering the streets of Ninh Bin, Vietnam one evening around dusk, I came across a pile of guys huddled around a board speaking in a spirited manner. Poking my head into the group I saw them playing some sort of game around a grid shaped board with checker like pieces each having a Chinese character scrawled on the top. Aah, the famed Chinese Chess game called XiangQi. (Gardung in Vietnam). Quietly observing, I tried to make sense of the strategy and objective of the game, but it eluded me as I was approaching it with the general hopes that it would resemble it's western namesake counterpart.



But nooooo, there were pieces that I thought were rooks, which magically jumped over an opponent piece to capture, there were pawns that moved sideways, and knight like pieces that were blocked in a certain direction, and there is a domain called the castle with special diagonal lines that the king and guards can not exit. There's even a river running through the middle of the board!! And to top it off (and from my perspective, in spirit with the Chinese habit of over-complexifying everything!) the same pieces on opposite sides were represented by different Chinese characters!!!! So I had to painstakingly write them all down on my little cheat sheet just to remember which piece could move in which direction. And out of it a really nice man gave me some lessons and we played a couple games and he gently creamed me each time. Aak!! Sooo much to learn in this life time. Fun game tho.