Hello go friends,

A coworker of mine is heading to China in a month or so. He is not a go player, but he said he would look for some books if I could give him any titles. Does anyone here have recommendations of Chinese books? I am interested mostly in historical go (e.g. 1600s era) and life and death, but any books that can be recommended on any topic would be fine.

I can't read Chinese but diagrams are usually self-explanatory.

Thanks for any help.

I think that tsumegos that they contain solutions. You shouldn't request a commentary game because you won't enjoy without knowing Chinese (to buy a commentary game is better that you buy in some language that you can read). Unless if it a book with a lot of games that you can't find in other site.

It is in my personal experience, I have books in korean and japanese, all of tsumegos except one that it is a game with commentary (I won in a tournament...). They are so goods, I know in korean and japanese "play black", "play white", "bad solution", "good solution" and other terms that categorized tsumegos (like as "ko", "life", "death"...) I must check when I saw.

For some Chinese books it is not necessary to go to China. Sun Ruoshi published his English translations of some classic weiqi texts. Here is his thread. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=10127

So far 4 texts have been translated and 2 of them are mentioned in the thread. Apart from the ones mentioned in the thread, there are English translations of Three Stone Games and Four Stone Games (in 2 volumes), by Guo Bailing.

You may want to ask your friend to look for Yi Kuo, by Huang Longshi. As of yet no English translation exists for it. There is also Guanzipu, of which PDFs exist online, but I have a Chinese-language copy with answers. At my current level I find Guanzipu to be too advanced, but it is a good tome for those seeking to improve their endgame skills.

As for commented games, unless you can read Chinese it would be better just to get the kifu and replay it.

There is a cornucopia of Chinese-langauge books from which to choose, but I'll keep it brief. One series I like very much is a collection of puzzle books from Liaoning Science & Technology Press. Here is an image of one of the books in this series.



In China one can get all of them for a relatively low price. The formatting is similar to that of the Speed Baduk books, so I think you will be happy with these.

Also, Logan, a member of lifein19x19.com , published a PDF containing games by Huang Longshi and PDFs of a couple other classical Chinese players. Here is the thread in case you are interested. viewtopic.php?f=17&t=10643

I really wish there were a Chinese book seller located in China, which didn't triple the cost to have them shipped to me.

Seems like I could only really get a sensible price if I went there in person, but that's hardly a way to save costs.

Maybe if I end up in China I guess. It's not impossible that I might go there some day, and bring back an insane amount of weiqi books and tea.

Jingdong ships items outside of China, has a large selection of weiqi books for sale, and doesn't have insanely high shipping costs - unless you want shipping by air. (Check for availability, though. Some items tend to be out of stock.) Aliexpress.com also exports, but I haven't found any weiqi books therein.

http://en.jd.com