Older News From 24 August 2000:
The annual National Youth Tournament just completed on 22 August 2000 in Tanggangzi Sanatorium appears to have special significance this year. After a long period of neglect, women's go in China is to be given a special boost, and any girl performing well in this event can expect to be marked out for special privileges.
When China was desperately trying to "beat the Japanese 9-dans", it produced female players of the calibre of Rui Naiwei 9-dan, Feng Yun 9-dan, Zhang Xuan 8-dan and Hua Xueming 7-dan. Since then, though, the flow of high-dan players has completely dried up. With little challenge from Japan or Korea, China's administrators have seen no need to promote women's go specially. That is now changing as Rui Naiwei, guesting at the Korean Go Association, threatens to help bring Korea's women up to the top echelons.
One name to watch for the future from this year's event is 12-year-old Ma Xiaobing who has been playing go for six years. She won all nine of her games. Given China's desire, the location this year is nicely symbolic. It is in the area known as Qianshan or 1000 Hills, near Shenyang. Legend has it that a fairy wanted to bring spring to the people and so began embroidering clouds on lotus flowers. Just as she was about to complete the 1000th, the gods found out and arrested her. In the subsequent struggle the flowers all fell to earth and blossomed as the 1000 hills.
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A recent Japanese report has pointed out that there are now over 20 Chinese professional players in Japan, most of them women. They do not have permits to play go, and many are registered as students, but several are able to keep in touch with go in various ways. It is said that the male players have not been able to play since the time when Chen Jiarui applied in the mid 1980s. He was apparently turned down by the Nihon Ki-in on the grounds that he was not yet 5-dan, but was eventually able to join the Kansai Ki-in, who gave him 5-dan.
A war of words reputedly developed between the Nihon Ki-in and the Chinese Go Association and this led to a permanent block. Maybe contradicting that, though, the Japanese pro Miyazaki Shimako was allowed to compete in the 1st Women's Mingren in China (she finished 7th) in 1989, and it does not square with the immense goodwill of the Go Exchanges and the Supergo matches. There has been more pressure recently for Chinese women to be allowed to play in Japanese events, as female events in China have almost dried up, but in this case the Japanese pros unashamedly insist on protecting their own income.
Those Chinese who stay in Japan, however, can earn money from go by teaching. Kong Xiangming 8-dan is reputed to get 300,000 yen a month from the Ministry of Education, for example. Lu Jian 5-dan. also teaching amateurs, said he was able to find pupils from the second day he arrived, despite the language problem. They have also formed themselves into an official group in the hope of attracting sponsorship for a tournament one day.
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Older News From 15 August 2000:
Current rankings (as of 31 July) in the win-loss stakes for the year 2000 show Kong Jie 5-dan leading with 39-17, followed by Liu Jing 8-dan (36-16) and Gu Li 5-dan (35-12). Of the senior players there is virtually no trace - see the bleats in previous reports. But Yu Bin 9-dan, at 33 with just one year left before he falls over the cliff of senility, is hanging in in 6th place with a 32-14 record.
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Older News From 12 August 2000:
Having just been accused by Yi Ch'ang-ho of suffering from excessive fear of Korean players, the Chinese go press are currently indulging in a fit of navel-gazing, trying to work out where their plans for world domination went wrong. They have identified, in the traditional Chinese numerological way, Five Diseases.
"Premature senility" is one. Not so much burnout, as one might have expected from the intensely competitive Chinese system, but lack of longevity of the type exemplified, in Chinese eyes, by Cho Hun-hyeon of Korea and Kobayashi Koichi of Japan. This seems directed at Nie Weiping most of all, but in general the Chinese have concluded that 34 is about the cut-off age for their top stars at present.
"Slow maturity" is apparently a problem, too. The Chinese look with envy at performances by Korean young stars Yi Ch'ang-ho and Yi Se-tol and wonder why their groups of "seven little dragons" and "seven little tigers" never seem to grow into big dragons and big tigers in quite the same way.
"Naivety" is perhaps a related problem. The pressure-cooker system in China may be breeding lots of prodigies who lack the understanding of the wider world needed in adulthood.
"Arrogance" is a charge levelled in the somewhat brutal way Chinese can have when criticising others. We might prefer to call it complacency. After the stupendous achievements of the Chinese in first catching up with the Japanese 9-dans, and then briefly glittering on the world stage, some players may have felt they deserved a breather.
Which leads us to the last charge: "indolence and love of fun and games". Young Chinese professionals have been known to enjoy mah jong, poker, computers, the odd tipple, dancing. Breathing and eating still seem to be on the approved list, for the time being, but clearly anyone reading this MSO site would be beyond the pale as a Chinese pro.
Not only do the Chinese journalists offer any sensible cure to back up their diagnosis. They signally fail to question whether they may be part of the problem.
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Older News From 29 July 2000:
Pleading fatigue, Ma Xiaochun 9-dan has decided to decline invitations to play in the 5th Samsung Cup, the 6th NEC Cup and the 2nd Nong Shim Spicy Noodles Cup. He has been hinting for a while that he wants a period of recuperation after three highly dispiriting losses by just half a point in his last three major international events, though to balance those he has won three international titles over the past two years.
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Older News From 27 July 2000:
CCTV is making a television documentary on the "Iron Goalkeeper" Nie Weiping 9-dan, and Nie and team were filming in Japan in July. Nie's glorious achievements in the Japan-China matches were relived through interviews with Japanese luminaries such as Kobyashi Koichi 9-dan and Yoda Norimoto 9-dan.
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The national promotion tournament in Lingchuan, Shanxi, in July 2000 saw a record 42 dan promotions. This was out of only 112 players. Among the better known names. Wang Yuhui, Duan Rong and Dong Yan became 7-dan; Qiu Jun, Liu Shizhen, Lin Zhaohua and Wu Xinyu became 6-dan; Zou Junjie, Gu Li, Liu Xing, Huang Yizhong and Zhou Bo became 5-dan. Specially notable was the performance of Gu Li from Chongqing, the only player to win all his 12 games.
There were 22 new 1-dans out of 264 aspirants. Two were specially singled out, presumably as the names to watch for the future: Liu Yuanbo of Beijing and Zhou Zhenyu of Jiangsu.
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Older News From 21 July 2000:
The National Sports Association Go Tournament (once one of the grandest events in the year but a little bit of a sideshow now in pre-capitalist China) was held in Ningbo from 29 May to 3 June 2000. Kong Jie 5-dan won the men's individual event ahead of Liu Jing 8-dan, Ma Xiaochun 9-dan, Wang Lei 8-dan, Gu Li 4-dan and Lin Feng 3-dan. The victor in the women's event was Yang Hui 8-dan ahead of Li Chunhua 4-dan, Zhang Xuan 8-dan, Xu Ying 3-dan, Wang Rui 2-dan and Li Ying 2-dan. 32 men and 14 women take part over 9 and 7 rounds respectively. Time limits are 30 seconds a move.
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Older News From 15 July 2000:
Thoughts of Chairman Chen: Chen Zude, chairman of the China Go Association, has been waving his little red book at top stars Nie Weiping and Ma Xiaochun. Irritated by Nie's outburst against Rui Naiwei when refusing to play in the recent Hitachi Pairs, and by what he called the "comedy" of Ma's refusal to accept his prize as runner-up in the Chunlan Cup, Chen has been airing his thoughts through magazine interviews. Reminding the stars that they form part of the "special privileges elite" in China, he says there is a need for some internal discipline, and makes it plain that if that is not forthcoming then rules will be imposed. On a totally different tack, he also opines that the uprating of komi from 2.75 to 3.75 points Chinese style (7.5 Japanese style) is only a matter of time.
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The annual tournament to allow new players into the professional ranks began in Lingchuan on 11 July 2000. 264 hopefuls crowded into the Lingchuan Hotel, having paid handsomely for the privilege of being there. 208 tried last year when 20 places were made available for new 1-dans compared with 12 the previous year. Although it is becoming tougher for the lower-ranked pros to make a good living now in China, the thinking behind the increase in numbers is partly to bring on new young talent to keep up with the precocious Koreans, and partly because certain parts of China currently lack go professionals (e.g. Jiangxi, Qinghai, Xizang). But fundamentally the aim is to impose a strict regulation on overall numbers and to achieve a spread for each province of one pro per 200 people.
The other rules have therefore been tightened up this year. The promotion hopefuls are limited to age 17 if male and 20 if female. Each province has to pay a fee according to how many applicants it sends. For up to four applicants the fee is 300 yuan per person; for 5-8 it is 600 yuan each and for 9-12 it is 900 yuan each. Nevertheless, for many money does not seem to be an obstacle in the new China. It has been reported that one player applied to leave the professional ranks so that she could play in amateur tournaments, but then she applied to rejoin, which was allowed on payment of a massive 10,000 yuan fee. In career terms it was probably still a smart move.
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Older News From 8 July 2000:
At the halfway stage in the year 2000 top performing player in percentage terms is female pro Zhang Xuan 8-dan, wife of Chang Hao. With a 15-3 record she is on 83.3%, well ahead of Liu Jing 8-dan (27-9, 75%), Zhou Heyang 8-dan and Luo Xihe 8-dan (both on 21-9, 70%), and the latest new star Lin Feng 3-dan (14-6, 70%).
In terms of number of wins, Yu Bin 9-dan heads the field (30-13), followed by Liu Jing (27-9) and Kong Jie 5-dan (27-12), Shao Weigang 9-dan (26-15), Wang Lei 8-dan (25-12). A little lower down the list it is nice to see Nie Weiping 9-dan scoring 22-12. Ma Xiaochun surprisingly doesn't appear in the top ten for any measure (except income, maybe!).
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Older News From 6 July 2000:
The Chinese squad - 10 men and one woman - to compete for the opportunity to take unseeded places in Korea's 4th Samsung Cup has been announced: Luo Xihe 8d, Shao Weigang 9d, Wang Lei 8d, Ding Wei 7d, Zhang Xuan 8d, Zhang Wendong 9d, Cao Dayuan 9d, Liu Jing 8d, Yu Ping 6d, Qiu Jun 5d and Wang Yuhui 6d. The games take place over four rounds from 27 July to 1 August 2000.
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Older News From 3 July 2000:
Kong Xiangming 8-dan has announced that she will return to China next year after 10 years in Japan. She has a secure job teaching go to civil servants of Japanese government institutions and the Ministry of Education, but her son Kong Lingwen (or Ko Reibun as he is known in Japan) is now established as a pro (though stuck at 1-dan since 1997) and has reached adulthood. She is also apparently a little bit homesick, a feeling exacerbated by her recent visit to Shanghai for the Hitachi Pairs Cup. Young Kong is also the son of Nie Weiping. For a time Kong Xiangming was the top woman player in the world.
