A NEW CHINESE GAME

"The Game of Wei-chi" By Count Daniele Pecorini (formerly Commissioner of Customs in China), and Tong Shu (Chinese Diplomatic Service). London: Longmans, Green and Co. The game of wei-chi makes a related appearance among the Western peoples, for it has been in vogue in China since 2350 B.C, and mention is made of it by Confucius in 600 B.C. It is now being put on the British and Continental markets, and importance attaches to the present work as being the only one in the English language dealing with the game. In a foreword Professor H. A. Giles, who holds the chair of Chinese in the Cambridge University, claims to have been the first to introduce the game into England. He says it is easily learned, and that amusement may be got out of a slight knowledge of it, though "to become a master is an affair of years." At a time when thinking threatens to be numbered among the lost arts and "mostly fools," is probably true of as many people as when Carlyle uttered his immortal apothegm, the game of wei-chi has a special claim to attention, for the Emperor Yao, who invented it, proposed by its means to cure his son, Tan Chu, of constitutional dullness. The game was a recognised relaxation in the time of Confucius, who expressly tells his followers that to play it is "much better than doing nothing." Like chess and draughts it is played with a board, but as an intellectual pastime its superiority to chess is incontestable, and the same claim would doubtless be made for it as against draughts, which as a brain exercise, in the opinion of Edgar Allan Poe, also comes before chess, since victory or defeat with the best players hangs on a single move. In a game which in all ages has taxed the subtlest minds in China, and yet can be played by a child, there must, as the saying goes, be something, and the present work places at the service of the learner all that he needs to know to become at accomplished player, especially as the letter-press is illumined by plates.