Chinese board games from Go and xiangqi to Mahjong, Liubo, Jungle and army chess: how each one plays, where it came from, and the Chinese Checkers twist.
The best known Chinese board games are Weiqi, called Go in the West, and Xiangqi, or Chinese chess, with Mahjong as the great tile game beside them. Around those three sits a wider family: the ancient dice game Liubo, the promotion game Shengguan Tu, and modern favourites such as Banqi, Jungle and army chess.
Chinese Checkers belongs in the conversation too, though for a surprising reason, which we will get to. This guide walks through each game in roughly historical order, explains how it plays in a few sentences, and points out where the history is solid and where it is still guesswork.
Weiqi: the encircling game
Weiqi (围棋, wéiqí) means something like the encircling game, and that is exactly what it is. Two players take turns placing black and white stones on the intersections of a grid, usually 19 lines by 19. Stones never move once placed. A stone or group is captured when the opponent occupies every point next to it, and the winner is whoever controls more of the board at the end.
Go is generally said to have been invented in China more than 2,500 years ago, and it is often described as the oldest board game still played continuously today. The earliest written reference is usually traced to the Zuo Zhuan, a chronicle from around the fourth century BCE, and archaeological finds show that earlier boards used a 17 by 17 grid. In imperial China, skill at the game counted as one of the four arts expected of a cultivated scholar, alongside music, calligraphy and painting.
If you have never played, start on a 9 by 9 board. Games are short, the rules are identical, and you learn the central idea of which groups live and which die very quickly.
Xiangqi: hunting the general
Xiangqi (象棋) is the Chinese member of the chess family, played on nine files and ten ranks with the pieces on the points rather than in squares. A river divides the board, each General is confined to a nine-point palace, and the Cannon captures by jumping over exactly one piece. The game had taken its modern form no later than the Southern Song dynasty, which ended in 1279.
It is the everyday game of China's parks and street corners, and it travelled with Chinese communities across Asia and beyond. Vietnam plays it as cờ tướng, and Korean janggi is a close relative. Our history of xiangqi covers the story in depth, so here it is enough to say that if Go is a game of territory, xiangqi is a game of hunting down a king.
Liubo: the lost game of the Han tombs
Liubo (六博, liùbó) is the mystery of the family. It was a two-player game in which each side had six pieces, moved around a square board marked with a distinctive symmetrical pattern. Instead of dice, players threw six sticks. The game appears in poetry from the third century BCE and was hugely popular under the Han dynasty, when boards and pieces were buried in tombs and carved scenes showed people, and sometimes winged immortals, bent over a game.
Then it vanished. After the Han it faded, possibly pushed aside by Go, and by the Yuan dynasty nobody seems to have remembered how it was played. What we know now comes largely from archaeology: excavated boards, sets of pieces and tomb art. Scholars and enthusiasts have proposed reconstructions, but treat any modern Liubo rulebook as an informed guess rather than the original game.
Shengguan Tu: a race up the civil service
Shengguan Tu (升官图), often translated as the table of bureaucratic promotion, is usually traced to the Tang dynasty. Players take the role of officials and move up a chart of government posts, aiming for the highest rank. Luck plays a large part, and modern writers often compare it to snakes and ladders. It was long played for money, and it also taught players the maze of imperial titles. It is a useful reminder that not every classic Chinese game is a pure test of strategy.
Mahjong: tiles instead of a board
Mahjong (麻将, májiàng) is the one game here with no board at all. Four players, sometimes fewer, draw and discard tiles from a set that usually numbers 144, trying to complete a hand of four sets and a pair. The game took shape in nineteenth-century China. Its birthplace is debated, with Ningbo and Fujian both suggested, and the earliest surviving tile sets date from around 1870. The older name 麻雀 (máquè) means sparrow and is still used in Cantonese; one popular explanation is that shuffled tiles chatter like birds.
Mahjong Solitaire is something else entirely. It uses the same tiles but is a single-player matching puzzle, and its gameplay has nothing to do with the four-player game. It is mostly played on screens, which is why many people meet the tiles there first.
Banqi: xiangqi pieces turned face down
Banqi (半棋, bànqí, half chess), also called 暗棋 or dark chess, uses a normal xiangqi set on half the board. All 32 pieces are shuffled face down on a grid of 4 by 8 squares. The first player turns one over and plays whichever colour appears. Pieces move one step at a time and capture by rank, with a twist: the General outranks everything except the lowly Soldier, which can capture it. Games last ten or twenty minutes and are played for fun far more than for rating points, which is exactly their charm.
Jungle: the animal game
Jungle, or dou shou qi (斗兽棋, the fighting animals game), is a modern Chinese game with a hazy origin, played on a 7 by 9 board with two small rivers in the middle. Each player has eight animals, from the elephant at the top of the order down to the rat. Stronger animals eat weaker ones, yet the rat can defeat the elephant and is the only animal allowed into the water, while the lion and tiger leap across it. You win by walking any piece into your opponent's den. The rules are simple enough for young children, and the board quietly teaches them about ranks, traps and timing.
Luzhanqi: army chess with an umpire
Luzhanqi (陆战棋, land battle chess), often just called junqi (军棋, army chess), is China's answer to games like Stratego. Each player sets out 25 pieces with their ranks hidden from the opponent, from a field marshal down to humble engineers, plus bombs, landmines and a flag. Pieces travel one step along roads or race along railway lines. When two pieces meet, their ranks are compared, ideally by a neutral referee, and the lower one leaves the board. Capture the enemy flag and you win.
There are four-player versions in which partners sit opposite each other, and plenty of house rules, so agree on them before you start. The game is mostly played by children, often before they move on to xiangqi or Go.
The Chinese Checkers twist
Chinese Checkers is not Chinese. It was invented in Germany in 1892 under the name Stern-Halma, a star-shaped version of the older American game Halma. The name Chinese Checkers came from the United States in 1928, when the Pressman company chose an exotic-sounding label to sell it. The name stuck around the world, and Chinese speakers today call the game tiaoqi (跳棋), the jumping game.
It is still a lovely family game. Two to six players race their marbles or pegs across a six-pointed star, hopping over any piece in the way, and there is no capturing at all, which keeps it friendly for mixed ages.
Where to start
If you want one game to learn deeply, choose Go or xiangqi; both reward years of study. For a relaxed evening with a xiangqi set you already own, try Banqi. Jungle and army chess are ideal for children, and Mahjong is the natural pick for a table of four.
On XiangqiPlay you can play xiangqi, Go, Mahjong Solitaire and Chinese Checkers in your browser, with a free account to get you to the board.
XiangqiPlay Team
XiangqiPlay newsroom
