The traditional name "Taichi" and the false name"tengen"

Chinese article

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/424919502


This article will be translated successively at below.

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Zhang-hu 章浒
Committed to the restoration Chinese traditional Weiqi
Research on ancient Weiqi rules & Classic (Dunhuang Classic and the Thirteen Chapters Classic)
From Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

Mh… “traditional” vs. “false” makes me prick my ears



Mh… I guess it is for similar reasons why I call smartphones “electro thingies” and GIF animations “wiggle images”

But yeah, let’s also revive the old tradition of eating the hearts of our enemies. And honestly, I would indeed prefer living in a cave—assuming that I will have between-net there, and lightning-in-a-metal-wire of course, and my counting machine.

Forgive my sarcasm—I must admit that I hardly understand any of the auto-translated text there, and it seems that it represents a revisionist, if not nationalist, view rather than a deeper interest in Weiqi.
I’ll be glad to apologise if I am mistaken—I know that I tend to knee-jerk reactions when someone pushes some of my oversensitive buttons.

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

The center star point? That will always be tengen. Just like "star point" will always be hoshi. And sushi will never be "fish on rice."

The Center of The Universe, however, is a different story. It's in Wallace, Idaho, and it's true; I've been there. I have proof:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cen ... e-universe

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David Bogie, Boise ID
I play go, I ride a recumbent, of course I use Macintosh.

Very normal stress response.

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Zhang-hu 章浒
Committed to the restoration Chinese traditional Weiqi
Research on ancient Weiqi rules & Classic (Dunhuang Classic and the Thirteen Chapters Classic)
From Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

Hahaha, I appreciate your humour
(which, admittedly, released some Adrenalin and Cortisol into my system )

And what will come next—should we accuse Japan and Korea, and then the whole “West”, of culturally appropriating Weiqi?

Honestly, I do like both terms, be it “Heart of Weiqi” or “Origin of heaven”.

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Tengen doesn't really have to represent anything in ancient Chinese. Similarly taichi usually means shadowboxing in English, right?, and everyone ignores that the second syllable is pronounced more like ginger than tea or cheese. Sometimes it is a good thing when loanwords lose their connection to the original.

Language changes and evolves over time. What's the problem?

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be immersed

Conclusion

The meaning of the word "tengen" is relatively broad, and it is inappropriate for the Japanese to use it for the naming of the board heart. The ancient Chinese named "the center point of the board" as "the board heart", "taichi(taiji)" or "heavenly heart", which is undoubtedly more accurate; weiqi players in the Qing Dynasty generally called it "taiji". In today's weiqi textbooks, the "center of the board" (board heart) is generally called "tengen"; Hangzhou QiYuan（Hangzhou Chess Academy） Building is also called "tengen(Tianyuan)" building, and there are many local weiqi academies named after "Tianyuan" in china now.

So, is there a need to change the name? The author believes that since it has been named, there is no need to change it.

However, we should broaden our knowledge and develop our thinking, and we should not copy what others say. We should understand the source and origin of "tengen". The term "tengen" was widely used in other fields in ancient China, but it is not a proprietary traditional WeiQi term, so it cannot directly represent the traditional Chinese WeiQi culture.

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Zhang-hu 章浒
Committed to the restoration Chinese traditional Weiqi
Research on ancient Weiqi rules & Classic (Dunhuang Classic and the Thirteen Chapters Classic)
From Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

It depends what you mean by "we". If you mean Chinese people, what you say may be fine, although more accurately you should in that case say tianyuan is the "false" term.

Almost all go players outside China use Japanese, and the related Korean, rules. Almost all (Korea excepted) use Japanese terminology.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Japanese using the term tengen. It was not, and never has been, tianyuan in Japanese.

The Japanese term was invented in Japan by a Japanese person for a game using Japanese rules, and was read in the Japanese way (Sino-Japanese if you prefer, but that was still Japanese).

The inventor, furthermore, was a distinguished go player: Originally Yasui Santetsu (1639 ~ 1715), son of Yasui I. He became better known as a scholar and astronomer under the name Shibukawa Sukezaemon Shunkai, or more simply Shibukawa Shunkai, although recent research suggests it was meant to be read Shibukawa Harumi.

The go part of thje story is that, in 1657, under the guardianship of Yasui Sanchi, he began to receive an official stipend and, after being appointed as the family heir in 1659, he began to play in Castle Games. According to Honinbo Dosaku he was 7-dan. He was also a distinguished Confucian scholar and the foremost expert of his time on astronomy, at which he became expert by studying the latest Chinese books based on imported European principles, and by making his own astronomical observations. A revised version of the calendar (the first by a Japanese) is due to him, at imperial request, and because of his involvement with this from 1683 he ceased playing Castle Games as Yasui Santetsu II. His new Jokyo era calendar was issued in 1684 and was used for 70 years. His reward was to be appointed by the shogunate to the Astronomical Institute (Tenmonkata) and it was in that capacity he changed his name to Shibukawa (the original name of the Yasui family) in 1702 and retired in lunar 1711-XII. He published many books on astronomy. His astronomy inspired a famous Castle Game against Dosaku in 1670 (GoGoD 1670-11-29a) when he played first move on the centre point (he lost by 9 points). It is from this that it is widely accepted (though not proven) that tengen as a go term may have become popular.

Furthermore, he was the subject of a 2010 book by Ubukata To, Tenchi Meisatsu (Insights into the Universe), partly about his life as ago player though mainly as a calendar maker). This won the Yoshikawa Eiji Literature Prize for New Writers and the Booksellers Prize (Honya Taisho). It has been made into a film. No doubt connected with this, he was an early inductee into the Nihon Ki-in Hall of Fame in 2012.

In short, Shibukawa and tengen are an important part of Japanese history in general. If you wish to make the point (a valid one) that people outside China should know the history of go in China better, you have to accept also that people within China ought to know the history of Japan better. This extends beyond go. Shibukawa was a Confucian scholar. But Confucianism in Japan was not the same as in China. In China, Confucianism is predicated on the Emperor having the Mandate of Heaven (in practice, the will of the people). In Japan, as defined by the Taiho Code of 701, which was a code drawn up explicitly to introduce Confucian ethics into Japan, the Emperor ruled by birthright (as with our new King Charles III). Are we to say Japanese ethics are false?

None of this should be turned into a nationalist "my dad is bigger than your dad" game.

All the above, also explains why nearly all of us in the west say "go" and not weiqi, while happily conceding go probably originated in China. For us, go is not a "false" name.

But what is a false name is taichi. It (太极) should of course by taiji. The commonest rendering of that in English seems to be Great Ultimate, though Supreme Pole has some adherents.

Ah, but when I look at the Characters I just see Muhammad Ali . . .

First,
You stigmatize me as a so-called nationalist, I don't want to fall into the so-called nationalist debate（If ONLY IF I say: Anglo Saxons are big trouble makers. It will certainly cause great trouble in this forum. So, please don't put the hat of nationalism on my head.）

Second,
However, since you say so, I want to point out the fact that more than 90% of Japanese Go culture actually comes from ancient Chinese culture, so why do Japanese need to modify 10% of these cultures? Please read The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) carefully to get the answer.

The hat （so-called nationalist）you gave me seems to have gone beyond the scope of Weiqi discussion. I hope that we will not talk politics in this site, but discuss these issues from a cultural perspective.

PS:
1. tengen (JP pronunciation) and tianyuan(CN pronunciation) are different pronunciation of Chinese characters "天元".
2. Taichi（Wade-Giles system） and Taiji（PinYin）are in different sound recording methods for Chinese characters "太极".

_________________
Zhang-hu 章浒
Committed to the restoration Chinese traditional Weiqi
Research on ancient Weiqi rules & Classic (Dunhuang Classic and the Thirteen Chapters Classic)
From Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

I did not (and my English is better than yours). I addressed my remark to all possible discussants, precisely to head off the sort of remarks that can develop on this forum. Nationalism was hinted at in an earlier post in this thread.

But I am quite happy to agree with you if you do say Anglo-Saxons are big trouble makers

The national culture is the world culture. My goal is to restore the traditional Chinese Weiqi culture so as to distinguish it from the go culture transformed in Japan.This is the only way for the revival of Chinese Weiqi culture.

As for your choice, it is of course freedom.

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Zhang-hu 章浒
Committed to the restoration Chinese traditional Weiqi
Research on ancient Weiqi rules & Classic (Dunhuang Classic and the Thirteen Chapters Classic)
From Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

I more or less agree, and I certainly sympathise if you feel China's contributions have been overlooked. I think you will find it hard to find many people in the West who have dome as much as me to highlight Chinese history. My efforts have won recognition within China. General Lin Jianchao has called me a "Friend of China."

I am very happy to be thought of that way. But I also write extensively about go in Japan and Korea. I therefore think of myself also as a Friend of Japan and a Friend of Korea.

Thank you for your efforts and contributions to the spread of weiqi/go culture.

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Zhang-hu 章浒
Committed to the restoration Chinese traditional Weiqi
Research on ancient Weiqi rules & Classic (Dunhuang Classic and the Thirteen Chapters Classic)
From Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

I believe that you know quite a bit about go history in China, Korea, and Japan. You also have shared a great deal with others, which is commendable.

However, it is natural that you don't have equal expertise in the culture of all three countries. Even to natives of China, Korea, and Japan, there are disagreements regarding historical events that happened not too long ago, and it is impossible to have an opinion on those events without having some degree of bias - eg., you have to decide what facts you believe to be true. Many things are controversial, and it impossible to ascertain the truth with certainty about what happened.

The same is true even considering current events in the West today. Folks on every side of the political spectrum decry "fake news" regarding events that the individual has no way of absolutely knowing.

I don't mean this to suggest that any single individual on this forum is biased. Rather, I want to express that all historians and people who write about historical and even current events carry some degree of bias.

We can do our best to learn as much as we can, but our life experiences combined with the particular balance of materials we have researched necessarily leave us with some degree of bias (myself included).

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be immersed

Revisionism and nationalism is a touchy subject and some pushback can be healthy, else these things will rule the roost everywhere. I think the translated conclusions mostly cleared things up and is a great starting point for a conversation. I have known for a while that tianyuan is not a usual everyday Chinese word outside of Go. This was only a mild surprise because at that time I had recently watched some documentary or a short video from a Chinese public broadcaster which discussed the word as-if it was a usual Chinese word and was a bit propagand-ish in it's way of connecting the center of the Go board to other things. In general I am always surprised how much of Chinese Go vocabulary is almost everyday phrases. It was a very interesting, even if harder to enjoy because the article doesn't have a proper translation.

Hopefully there will be more Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and so on in this forum because many subjects of Go can be better informed and more perspectives are usually better. We really don't need kings and generals to bring us together to enjoy a boardgame.

I will use Baidu translation to translate my article and make manual correction.

The correct name of the traditional name "太极 Taiji(Taichi)" of the center of Weiqi board and the false name "天元 (Tengen for Japanese pronunciation, Tianyuan for Chinese pronunciation PinYin)"

(outline)


In ancient China, the center of Weiqi board was never named "天元 Tianyuan or Tengen", and the Chinese characters words "天元 Tianyuan" had other meanings and application fields.


1. The cosmology of ancient China -- the innate five Tai(太)s


The congenital five Tais are described in ancient Chinese philosophy as the five stages before the transition from the "nothing" to the birth of heaven and earth, and the five cosmic stages from "nothing" to "being":

太易(Tai Yi), 太初(Tai Chu), 太始(Tai Shi), 太素(Tai Su), and 太极(Tai Ji or Tahchi or taiji).


(References: 易纬·乾凿度 Yiwei , 列子 Liezi)



1.1 太易(Taiyi): There is not any 氣(or 气 Qi, source of terms of weiqi "liberty" in English ).

太易(Taiyi), the beginning of cosmology, the stage where 气（Qi） has not yet appeared.


1.2 太初(Taichu): Taichu is the beginning of 气(Qi).

太初(Taichu) is the beginning of Qi, and there is no form. There is only one innate energy 炁(Qi) in Taichu.



1.3 太始(Taishi): Taishi is the beginning of form.

Taishi is the initial stage of the form, and there is no qualitative stage yet.



1.4 太素(Taisu):Taisu is the beginning of quality.

太素(Taisu) is the beginning of quality and the stage of not yet mature.



1.5 太极(or 太極,Taichi,Taiji): Taiji is born from 无极.
太极(Taichi,Taiji) represents the state of the universe in which 阴(Yin) and 阳(Yang) has not separated yet;
and Yin and Yang, heaven and earth will be separated soon.


2. 黄帝内经 Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon: Plain Questions • The 天元(Tianyuan) Period Discourses and The Five Movements Discourses
（will continue)

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Zhang-hu 章浒
Committed to the restoration Chinese traditional Weiqi
Research on ancient Weiqi rules & Classic (Dunhuang Classic and the Thirteen Chapters Classic)
From Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China

The Internet is a place of magic.

---Side issue---
Japanese have cherished a reminded everyone of a role as a foster mother, but in later years Korea has become their adopted mother. If foot—actual foot—ball was weiqi, then England would be mainland China, Korea would be France/Spain/Netherlands/Brasil, Japan would be Croatia, and Taiwan would be like Wales nearly beating England in the 2016 Euros

However proper inclusion and implementation of the Chinese principles of WeiQi are essential if WeiQi is to become a worldwide sport recognised by the international Olympic committee and other similar bodies.
We need a "WeiQi's coming home" anytime China wins teams competitions.

It is my opinion that in general, unlike Chinese culture, Japanese and Korean culture mostly cannot become genuinely influencial in the west in a non-niche or non-fetish manner by the general western populace, except if they combine forced and balance out each others . . . Weaknesses? So as long as they are catfighting each other China is the best hope to make WeiQi more popular in the west as they've already been doing, much to the shock of the Nihon Kiin who's been doing the initial hard groundwork from nothing for decades. The birth mother wants her babies back.
---Side issue---

Now, what I find most fascinating is that instead of a 'heavenly original' description, here it's simply called 'the Greatest'. So in China it's seen as an ultimate point to reach, and rather a representation of a force balance, whereas in Japan it's seen as a cause for a certain state of the board, it's origin, which is an earlier stage in the Chinese thinking. And that may be due to the playing philosophies of Ancient Chinese WeiQi compared to the later Japanese IGo.