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.

I think this is a good goal to pursue. The world should know more about Chinese weiqi history and their contributions to the game. It just so happens that since Japan was the first country to introduce weiqi to Western countries, much of what we know about the game and its history comes from Japanese sources. Thus, for a long time weiqi was considered a Japanese game and no substantial efforts were made (outside of academic circles) to establish a strong link between China and weiqi. Even so, now we can learn more about Chinese historical contributions to weiqi thanks to the work of Ruoshi Sun, who has published several English translations of classical Chinese weiqi books and the academic research of people like Mr. Fairbairn, who has published his own books. (And I happen to have 2 of his works.)

Do you believe we should establish tournaments to resurrect the playing of weiqi under old Chinese rules, like the ones under which Huang Longshi, Fan Xiping, and Shi Xiangxia played?

pgwq: there is a big, though very inexact, difference in English between 'ancient' and 'old'. You use both terms in your reply, so it would be useful to know which is intended.

In the case of go, references to go in, say, the Dunhuang Classic would certainly count as ancient, and probably that would be acceptable to many people for anything up to the late Ming Dynasty, too. But from Qing times, including the time of Huang Longshi, I think we would more usually call that simply "old" Chinese go, and even (some) Ming Dynasty go would count as "old."

I think this distinction would apply simply because of the huge timespan involved. However, the fact that Chinese rules changed in (apparently) Ming times fortuitously makes that distinction even more useful.

So, the obvious questions are:

1. What do you mean by "ancient" Chinese rules? If you mean go of the era of Guo Bailing and Huang Longshi onwards (which I would call "old Chinese go"), do you wish to restore a form of go that simply uses group tax, or do you want to include the four starting stones as well?

2. If you really do mean ancient (pre-Ming), do you want to use the pre-Ming method of counting, and do you want to allow variants with differing numbers of starting stones, for example? (It would seem strange to take this choice as we have no reliable documentary evidence, such as game records, that show us how ancient go was played.)

If your answer is (1), why do you want to restore it, and do you know why the Chinese Weiqi Association rejects it? It seems to me that both forms can easily just co-exist, with the ancient version reserved perhaps for small-case private use, as happens with chess players who sometimes play ancient Arabic or Indian versions of the game.

Just for information, there are similar problems when talking about older forms of Chinese (or any language, really). The umbrella term is usually "classical Chinese" (and we can likewise easily talk of all of Chinese go prior to, say, the 20th century as "classical Chinese go". But to make finer distinctions, linguists use terms such as Archaic Chinese, and split this into Early Archaic and Late Archaic and so on. It sounds very scientific but doesn't really tell us very much.

If I was forced to try to make a meaningful distinction for Chinese go, I would diffidently say "ancient" for go up to and including the Tang period. Then Tang to Mid-Ming, then Late Ming to Late Qing. How would you divide it up, and what would your criteria be?

In Japan it's easy: Edo go and modern go. In Korea, sunjang go and modern go (though with the reservation that sunjang go may also be Chinese in origin).