Overview

Xiangqi or Chinese Chess as it may be more familiar to the Westerner, is an ancient Chinese game that has been played for centuries. There are millions of estimated Xiangqi players, who are mostly concentrated in China and South-east Asia. However, in non-Chinese speaking regions in the world, the game is relatively unknown. The game is intellectually demanding, easy to learn, very exciting, and not too time demanding, which would be a perfect fit for the hectic lifestyles that most people have. Www.xqinenglish.com was formed in 2011 with the main aim of promoting Xiangqi to non-Chinese speaking people. There have been over 2300 pages to date, covering most, if not all aspects of Xiangqi. One of the features provided on the site was a collection of well over 3000 puzzles that have been published over the years. This book is a selection of the those puzzles which has been organized into different levels of difficulty. Detailed explanations of the puzzles have been added with additional diagrams to aid the reader should you get lost. A chapter has also been added to instruct complete new beginners who may not know how to play the game or read notation. An appendix has also been added with detailed biographies of some of the grandmasters and masters whose actual games were used in the book. For complete beginners, the puzzles in Chapter Two would be suitable and amateurs with a slight background in Xiangqi would find Chapter Three a challenge. To facilitate the Westerner who may not know Chinese, a legend has been added at the bottom of each page to show the Chinese characters and their respective pieces. Have Fun! Be a Xiangqi Assassin!

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9789574337750

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Jim Png was born in Malaysia, but he grew up in Singapore and later went to Taiwan where he finished his medical education and training to become an orthopedic surgeon. His love affair with Xiangqi has lasted for over three decades now. During his school years in Singapore, Jim had been the president of his chess club and also the captain of his Xiangqi team, which had won the Raffles Cup in 1991 and was placed third place in 1993 in the same event. Medicine, the brutal training regiment of an orthopedic surgeon, family, and kids forced him to stop playing competitive Xiangqi. Instead, Jim has found another way of enjoying Xiangqi, by sharing his love of Xiangqi with the non-Chinese speaking world. He does this with www.xqinenglish.com, a website that he launched in 2011. Since then, Jim has singlehandedly uploaded thousands of puzzles, and hundreds of pages onto his website. The website has over 2400 pages at last count. In 2016, he started uploading videos onto Youtube where there are hundreds of videos now. Feeling that he could do more, Jim has embarked on other ambitious projects. Some of the fruit of his labors include the first ever Lexicon of Xiangqi Terms in English, which he hopes to allow non-Chinese speaking people to communicate Xiangqi in their native tongues. He has also translated several ancient manuals, and meticulously researched Chinese history in his translations. He hopes to be able to translate as many ancient manuals as he can. His ultimate goal is to share with the world the beauty of Xiangqi, a way of life. Jim is still working hard at promoting Xiangqi every day, often putting in more hours into it than his day job. Jim Png is happily married and has two children.

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