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Weiqi in Taiwan
August 16,
2004
By Zeke Tamayo
Taiwan is full of go conundrums.
Although weiqi isn't on every street corner here,
practically everyone here knows what it is. Places
to actually play are hard to find but nearly every
bookstore has a small section of weiqi books. The
one thing I found for sure during a recent visit is
that everyone is willing to help.
The
Taiwan Weiqi Association's excellent web page (in
Chinese: http://taiwango.org.tw)
guided me to a weiqi place not too far from my
hotel, where another conundrum appeared, when it
turned out to be a children's school of weiqi. They
weren't interested in having me stick around, so
the search continued.
Meanwhile, one of my Taiwanese hosts invited me to
visit his family for tea and dinner. He was a big
help showing me around and getting me the best
deals at the Jade market (there were no Jade weiqi
stones). It turned out that his nephew had just
started weiqi school, and he made me take black,
even though he was only "24" (I'm still not sure
what "kyu" translates to, but later I heard a lot
of "danshi" equating to "dan"). I'm afraid I can't
play the best teaching-go (and the 16 rank
difference didn't help), but the second game was a
bit closer.
Then
my translator friend found me a place in Taipei
that was open Sunday and just $5 for the day. It
took me several tries to locate the club, after the
building attendants at the front and side directed
me with gestures to go around to the back of the
building. When I finally made it to the second
floor, I knew I'd arrived by the sign with the
Japanese kanji for weiqi.
At
first I was afraid it was another children's weiqi
school because of the number of 8-12 year olds, but
this must just be the effect of Hikaru no Go, which
is titled "King of Go" in Chinese. Although I speak
practically no Chinese, I was able to show the
symbol for 8 ("kyu" was assumed) and it wasn't long
before I was playing. I managed to win most of the
handicap games and got to play a couple of even
games against some kids, one of whom said he'd been
playing for 1 year as well. I hope I find as nice a
place on my next trip when I go to Tai-chung in
central Taiwan.
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