Chinese chess anyone?

While in China I learned to play this fascinating version of chess.  Would you like to join me in playing or learning to play Chinese chess?  Please let me know if you are interested so that I know how many boards to get.  It will probably be on a Saturday afternoon.  Let me know what times suit you.   We’ll meet at the church.

Don’t worry if you have never played it before, I’ll teach you.  If you already know how to play, all the better.  If you know how to play “international” chess, that will help.  But even that knowledge is not essential.

A brief digression:  Chess has been played and enjoyed around the world for at least one and a half thousand years, and possibly for much longer than two thousand years.  It is thought to have been invented in India around the 4^th century BC at the court of the Indian Rajah, Balhait.  Its earliest mention in literature is in a Persian romance, the Karnamak, written in about 600 AD.

As chess spread throughout the world, many variants of the game gradually took shape.  Although similar to each other and to “international” chess, distinctive variations of chess still exist in China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Burma and a few other places.  For more info on Chinese chess (and others) click here.  [The info is what I wrote on the website of St Barnabas College when I taught there.]