In Hangzhou, I visited Tian Yuan tower, the venue where the WAGC was held this year. For those who hadn't heard of it yet, Tian Yuan tower is a five star hotel that is very much go themed. It is the headquarters of the Hangzhou branch of the Chinese Weiqi Association, and it features go in several places. Even its name, which means "Origin of Heaven" and is equivalent to the Japanese term "tengen", is go themed. The most noticable go feature is the top of the tower, which is shaped like a go bowl and houses a revolving restaurant. In front of the building, there is a fountain. The fountainheads are black and white go stones, which surround a go bowl shaped planter with a beautiful two-meter-high bonsai tree in it. In the lobby, there is a large mural showing a classic Chinese go problem. I have reproduced the problem below. It is typically Chinese, in that best play by Black leads to ko, but in the official solution black avoids the ko only to fall victim to a clever tesuji by White. The focus is on whether you read out the deeper, clever tesuji, which makes the shallow ko necessary. For those that might be in the neighborhood, there will be a large 5 day tournament held in Tian Yuan tower in about a week. Sadly, I will be in Chengdu by then, so I will not be able to participate.
In Wuhan, I visited Yan An's Go School. This go school, which is run by [sl=YanAn]Yan An[/sl] (7 dan pro) is open to westerners through a cooperation with Guo Juan (5 dan pro), and has already housed quite a number of them (see http://internetgoschool.com/goinchina.vhtml for info). One of my best friends, Siu Hong Chung (2 dan) spent three months there two years ago, and helped us contact Yan An to ask if we could visit. The main reason for our visit was that two other Dutch friends of ours, Pepijn Visscher (1 dan) and Kim Ouweleen (3 dan) are currently studying there. Another Westerner, a German guy named Leo, is also studying there now. Since he recently broke his ankle playing basketball, he was unable to accompany us anywhere, sadly. We arrived in Wuhan on Friday, then met our friends Saturday morning, and accompanied them to one of the two go schools that Yan An runs. We arrived around 10 am, and all the children where already waiting. Well, waiting is too strong a word perhaps. I guess the average age is around 8-10 year old, so the kids were running around playing. Once Yan An had settled them down, the day started with a joseki lesson. Although everything was in Chinese, I had no trouble following the lesson. Yan An is quite expressive, underlining his points with gestures and facial expressions. After the lesson, we were paired up to play. The class we were in was the dan player class, where the playing strength varies from 1 dan to 5 dan. I was paired up with a little kid whose playing strength I did not know. I lost by 4.5 points, but from the game I would guess he was a little weaker than myself. Afterwards, our game was reviewed by Yan An, as was every other game in the room. After lunch, more games were reviewed, and then we played another one. This one I won by 4.5 points. Both games were fast-paced, aggressive and very enjoyable. Our day ended with a dinner at Yan An's house, where we met his family.
The next day, we met our friends again. This time we went to visit Dong Hu Park (East Lake Park), where we first did some sightseeing and then visited a hotel where you can play go. The signs in the park refer to it in their English translation as "Asian Chess Hotel". We arrived rather early, apparently, as there was only one player present. Since we added three, that allowed us to play on two boards. I played against Kim, while Pepijn played the Chinese player (who was 3 dan). My game against Kim took quite long, and as we played, more players arrived. I won my game undeservedly, I was behind during most of the game. The Chinese players present decided to play a small tournament, but since the afternoon was almost over, we decided to go to the city center and have something to eat. The next morning I managed to show how much I had learned that weekend by being slaughtered on KGS by Araban in our L19 tournament game
