To see how popular the game of Chinese chess (xiangqi) is in Beijing, all you have to do is take a stroll through town on a summer evening. In the hutongs, on the lakeshores, or any old patch of sidewalk, you'll find pairs of people hunched over boards, pondering an arrangement of wooden disks on a grid. Often, five or six friends will be gathered around, watching the game with the kind of quiet, intense interest that westerners would reserve for a particularly tense golf or tennis match. Curbside operators will sometimes arrange a chess problem on a board and let passers-by bet money on a chance to solve it.

There does seem to be something of a generational and gender divide when it comes to Chinese chess, however. The players I've seen have generally been old men, as are most of the spectators. It seems like a different scene than mah jongg, the other game you often see being played out on the sidewalk when the weather is nice (and which, thanks to the distinctive and wall-penetrating rattle of the tiles as they are shuffled between rounds, you can hear being played year-round). Mah jongg players are likely to be a mix of men and women, and there seems to be a bit more latitude in age range. You're also more likely to see fistfuls of small bills being discreetly handled around a mah jongg table, which may account for the raucous atmosphere.

Of course, like all board games, Chinese chess has been computerized. You can find various computer versions of the game advertised all over the Internet, and there is even a recent scholarly paper on the computerization of the game. But I was interested when I stumbled across a news article this weekend that explained why Chinese chess players are not impassioned by computer versions of the game:

Two men are supposed to sit face to face, close enough for them to judge from each other's face. For Chinese chess, the state of mind is a critical point to compete with. (sic)

A psychological battle is also one of the most fascinating parts in Chinese chess.

"A slight expression might leak a critical message: Your opponent is flurried," Xu Tianhong told China Daily.

Once a chess player is flurried, his opponent would scratch this opportunity to attack. This attack is often regarded as a deadly blow in Chinese chess.

On the other hand, the tradition has cultivated chess players' habit of observing their opponents.

"It is a great fun to observe your opponent," Liu Yu, an amateur Chinese chess player, told China Daily. "The changes in the board are accompanied by the shifting expressions."

However, human players are often overwhelmed by the absolute rationality of the computer. The computer doesn't know what it's winning or losing. So it doesn't care about the games.

"You can't see the computer sweating at all," Liu Yu said. "You can communicate your moves but you cannot communicate your emotions."

The occasion for all this navel gazing on the qualities of computerized Chinese chess was an event held this weekend at which a computer called "Inspur" defeated five Chinese chess grandmasters. At first glance, there is something of a sour grapes quality in many of the comments on the intangible differences in playing a person as opposed to a computer. Players of the European version of chess are more familiar to Westerners (which is actually Indian in origin and possibly descended from a common ancestral game) who have already been through this. Chess games are ultimately mathematical scenarios with clear and unambiguous rules; exactly the kinds of things that computers excel at.

I thought at first the generational swing in Chinese chess playership might also have accounted for the disdainful attitude toward (victorious) computerized opponents. After all, the current generation of Chinese youngsters, who are thoroughly addicted to computer games, would seem to have no problems with computerized opponents.

Which player is sweating?

Of course, the most popular computer games in China are massive multiplayer online games, which are all about group interaction. And, let's face it, it is more fun to play human opponents than computerized opponents. That's why multiplayer online games and networked frag fests like Quake and Half Life have become so popular. And a game like chess--either variety--is very much about pitting two people against each other in a personal test of intellect and strategy. It's hard to imagine computerized opponents generating quite the same sense of rivalry.

So a few possible solutions come to mind. First, invest a lot of money in developing a computer that can sweat, fidget and bite its lip in anxiety as it ponders its next move. Think of a more sophisticated version of the fraudulent chess-playing mannequin, "The Turk". Second, and more practically, use computers to mediate human play on the Internet with the help of ever simpler video and audio conferencing. That way you can simply use the computer to see your human opponent sweat no matter where in the world he is.

Or, finally, concede that Chinese chess is simply best played on a folding table on a hutong sidewalk, beneath the shade of the poplar trees, with your old rival seated opposite you and a crowd of quietly kvetching men in white singlets hunched around the table, watching every move anxiously and gently fingering their wallets.

The way it was meant to be. From Zharahk's Flickr page.