The art of black and white: wei-ch'i in Chinese poetry.

• Author: Chen, Zu-Yan

Wei-ch'i is the oldest and one of the most popular board games in China and other East Asian countries. Although the time of its origin cannot be set with certainty,(1) reliable anecdotes about the game date back to 548 n.c.(2) The game spread from China to Korea and Japan before the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907),(3) and in fact it is as go, the Japanese pronunciation of the character ch'i, that the game is commonly known in the West. Wei-ch'i is played with black and white pieces, or stones,(4) on a square wooden board crossed by 19 vertical lines and 19 horizontal lines which form 361 intersections, or "points." Players try to conquer territory by enclosing vacant points with boundaries made of their own stones, and by attacking and capturing hostile stones. The stones and board together account for both the simplicity and the complexity of the game: the two kinds of stones, black and white only, and the plainness of the rules of their movement, make the fundamentals easy to grasp; yet the large size of the board, with a wealth of combinations and an infinite variety of moves, demands extraordinary skill. The game requires years of practice and study for a player to become good even at the amateur level.(5)

The ingenuity and skill required made wei-ch'i not merely a pastime popular among nobilities and intellectuals, but elevated it to a princely art form. Wei-ch'i, calligraphy, painting, and the ch'in, a seven-string plucked instrument similar to the zither, were regarded as the "four arts"; attainment in all four was a sign of high cultivation and social finesse.(6) With its fusion of the intellectual and imaginative faculties, wei-ch'i offered particular inspiration and solace to poets. For instance, when Wang Yu-ch'eng (954-1001) was demoted to Huang-chou in 999, he built a bamboo tower and was consoled by its acoustic excellence: "I thus built a small bamboo tower with two rooms. It is a good place to play the ch'in, for the musical melodies are harmonious and smooth; it is a good place to chant poems, for the poetic tones ring pure and far; it is a good place to play wei-ch'i, for the stones sound out click-click."(7) When a stone is grasped between the nail of the second finger and the tip of the third - the traditional method - and placed on the board with confidence, a cheerful ringing note results. This sound was even more pleasant when mellowed and amplified by the bamboo tubes in Wang Yu-ch'eng's simple, elegant tower.

The association of wei-ch'i with poetry is due not only to the game's sophistication and the elegant environment in which it is often played. At a deeper level, both arts share a style based on abstraction and spontaneity. For novices or enthusiasts of modest attainments in either activity, mechanics are the primary concern. Masters, however, are occupied with the art of self-expression. It is no wonder that Fan Hsi-p'ing (b. 1709) and Shih Ting-an (1710-70), the two "national experts" (kuo-shou) of the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911), were likened stylistically to two great T'ang poets: "Hsi-p'ing is wonderful and lofty, like the divine dragon shifting shape - its head and tail are indistinguishable. Ting-an is accurate and strict, as an old steed galloping without a misstep. The commentators liken them to the poets Li Po and Tu Fu, which is most fitting."(8) The comparison of wei-ch'i players with poets satisfies both the intellectual and the aesthetic senses, for the arts are similar in their creative demands, the temperament of their practitioners, and the processes through which they unfold.

No game has surpassed wei-ch'i in the interest it has evoked among major Chinese poets, especially since the T'ang dynasty, when both poetry and wei-ch'i enjoyed a golden age.(9) Wei-ch'i poems often provide a vivid picture of a poet's daily activities, enhancing our understanding of his life and writing. On his poetic canvas, Tu Fu (712-70) often portrayed the suffering of the people in times of war and chaos. Yet once in a while he would draw a more pastoral scene: "My old wife draws a weich'i board on paper, / My little son pounds a needle into a fishing hook."(10) Even though he might not be able to afford a good wei-ch'i set, a game on a makeshift board could offer him peace and fun. Fan Ch'eng-ta (1126-93) chided his friends in poetry and wei-ch'i circles with gentle humor: "Willow branch frowning and plum blossom smiling each troubles me; / Poetry creditors and wei-ch'i enemies all come to haunt me."(11) Po Chu-i (772-846), too, was an ardent player and his wei-ch'i skills matched his poetic accomplishment: "The wei-ch'i game is done, I resent that I had no worthy opponent; / The poem is finished, I feel ashamed that I was first."(12) The juxtaposition of wei-ch'i and poetry here and in many other poems indicates the high favor these two arts shared among the literati.(13) This unique cultural phenomenon will be explored in this study through close analysis of a small but representative sampling of weio ch'i poems. Decoding these seemingly frivolous poems reveals the richness of wei-ch'i as a source of artistic inspiration. China's great poets drew from wei-ch'i's patterns of opposition three broad metaphors: wei-ch'i approximates war, offers paradigms for social order, and teaches lessons about humankind's moral stake in the cosmic game.

AN APPROXIMATION TO WAR

Wei-ch'i is, in the first place, intrinsically an antagonistic or warlike game, governed primarily by skills developed in handling strategic operations and tactical encounters; the game thus explores tension and complication and attempts to resolve them triumphantly.(14) For this reason alone, wei-ch'i was popular not only among the military but also in literary circles, for many courtiers, not satisfied by mere literary distinctions, hungered for the military glory that could be won on the frontier. "To be a general outside the court and a premier within the court" (ch'u-chiang ju-hsiang) was a pursuit of ambitious men throughout Chinese history. Among those summoned from the frontier to serve as chief minister in the 720s were Chang Chia-chen (665729), Wang Chun (c. 662-732), Chang Yueh (667-731), and Hsiao Sung (d. 749). Chang Yueh, a leading literary figure of the day, enjoyed fame as chief minister three times, and three times led troops against the Turks on the northern frontier, eventually winning victories over them. He expressed his longing for the perfect unity of literary and military merit in a couplet praising Ts'ao Ts'ao's (155-220) heroic spirit: "By day he would lead his strong knights and smash the impregnable phalanx, / By night he would invite literary men to write of the splendid chamber."(15)

This image of a master of both pen and sword, although hardly achievable, involved many literary men in a simulacrum of strategic reasoning and deduction. Tu Mu (803-53), who held official posts at court and in the provinces but never in the army, liked to discuss military affairs and strategy, as evidenced in his "Discourse on War" ("Chan-lun") and "Discourse on Defense" ("Shou-lun") in addition to his annotations of The Art of War of Sun-tzu (Sun-tzu ping-fa).(17) In 843, when Li Te-yu (787-850), then chief minister, was conducting a punitive military action against the rebellious military governor Liu Chen (d. 844), Tu Mu presented a letter to Li, in which he proposed detailed strategies and tactics for the operation.(18)

The fact that both Tu Mu and Chang Yueh were poets, strategists, and wei-ch'i lovers--they both played against national experts--is telling:(19) for men of all ranks, weich'i combined and stimulated their literary and military interests. The structure of the game, and in particular its abstract quality, made possible a depth of poetic analogy which no other pastime offered. This is clearly illustrated in Liu Ytl-hsi's (772-842) "Song of Watching a Wei-ch'i Game, as a Send-off for Master Hsuan's Journey West".(20) Two couplets in the middle of the poem describe the wei-ch'i skills of Master Hsuan, a Buddhist monk, from the poet's point of view as spectator:

First, I perceived dotted stars in the dawn sky;(21) Then, I saw soldiers fighting in late autumn. Your deployment was as wild geese in flight - nobody understood it, Until the cub was caught in the tiger's den, and all were shocked.(22)

The metaphor in the first line refers to the beginning of the wei-ch'i game, when stones are placed upon the board one by one, in a star-like pattern that appears random to unschooled observers. This trope underscores the similarity of wei-ch'i and war, which rest upon the deployment of troops and stones in endless combination. The second line demonstrates that battle is the heart of the game and that those who play it engage in war vicariously. In the third line, the strategic patterns and potentialities of Master Hsuan's wei-ch'i position are scarcely apparent to the spectators. They are puzzled by the complex, seemingly discontinuous patterns in which his forces are ingeniously deployed. Only when Master Hsuan finally thrashes his opponent do the meanings of his moves reveal themselves. Liu Yu-hsi's poem demonstrates his deep understanding of the coordinated placement of many stones, grouped strategically in widely separated areas of the board.(23)

The approximation of wei-ch'i both to individual combat and to a panoramic campaign motivated poets to draw inspiration from historic battles. Fan Chung-yen (989-1052), another "general outside the court and premier within the court" and wei-ch'i lover,(24) wrote "To a Wei-ch'i Player",(25) in which he combined both wei-ch'i spirit and military celebration for the reader's delight:

Where did you encounter the gods Who passed on these wei-ch'i tenets? Silently, you hold power over life and death, Imperceptibly, you grasp the laws of safety and danger. Your victories follow upon each other like banks of clouds; You resist enemies with the fortitude of a...