The mahjong page here opens by admitting a gap: no page on this site covered any Chinese game at all — not mahjong beyond two passing mentions, not weiqi, not Chinese chess. Mahjong got its page. The other two did not, which left the loudest game covered and the two most visible ones unexplained.
They are visible in a way mahjong is not. Mahjong happens indoors, or under an awning, among four people who know each other. Weiqi and Chinese chess happen in public, on stone tables, with a standing audience — in parks, on pavements, at bus terminals, wherever there is shade and a flat surface.
Here is what is on those boards, and the two separate official systems standing behind them.
Two games, and they are not variants of each other#
围棋 (wéiqí, the game the West mostly calls Go, from its Japanese name) is played with black and white stones on a grid of nineteen lines by nineteen. Players take turns placing a stone and never move it again; the object is to surround territory and to capture by depriving enemy stones of liberties. Nothing is ranked above anything else — every stone is identical, and the whole game is shape and space.
象棋 (xiàngqí, Chinese chess) is a capture game with distinct pieces, but almost none of the Western assumptions transfer. The pieces are flat discs with a character on them rather than figures. A blank band across the middle of the board — 楚河汉界 (Chǔ hé Hàn jiè), the Chu river and the Han border, named for a civil war that ended in 202 BC — cannot be crossed by some pieces at all. The general never leaves a marked nine-point palace. There is a cannon that captures by jumping over an intervening piece and no other way.
One thing they share and Western chess does not:
Both are on the national heritage list, filed under sport#
Here is the part that surprises people, and the classification is the interesting half.
The State Council published the second batch of the national intangible cultural heritage list as 国发〔2008〕19号, dated 7 June 2008 — 510 items, plus a first batch of 147 extension items to the earlier list. Both games are in it, and both are in category six: 传统体育、游艺与杂技 (traditional sport, entertainment and acrobatics), 围棋 as item Ⅵ-18 and 象棋 as item Ⅵ-19.
Read the category again. These are not filed as art, or as literature, or as folk knowledge. China's heritage system put its two great board games in the same drawer as wrestling styles, martial arts and acrobatics — as physical culture. That classification is not decorative; it is the same view that produces the second system below.
And both are sports, with a state grade attached#
China administers board games through the sports bureaucracy, in a chess-and-card management centre that sits inside the General Administration of Sport. A serious player is therefore an athlete in the administrative sense, and gets an athlete's grade.
The 运动员技术等级管理办法 (yùndòngyuán jìshù děngjí guǎnlǐ bànfǎ, Measures for the Administration of Athlete Technical Grades) were issued as General Administration of Sport Order No. 32 on 22 March 2024 and took effect on 1 January 2025. The grades are five: 国际级运动健将 (international-level sports master), 运动健将 (sports master), and first, second and third-grade athlete.
The event-by-event standards were reissued to match. Notice 体竞字〔2024〕121号 of 24 October 2024 published the revised Athlete Technical Grading Standards, in force from 1 January 2025 — 自2025年1月1日起施行（以比赛结束时间为准）, effective by the finishing time of the competition — and repealed the 2021 and 2022 standards notices outright.
Twenty grades, and a player holds two at once#
Now the checkable part, and it is the twenty-first time this site has found a status question already answered in plain sight in China.
Alongside the state athlete grade, each game's national association runs its own ladder, and the two run in parallel. A Chinese chess player is described by both at once — the national player lists published by the sports administration carry a column for the athlete grade and a separate column for the association title.
The Chinese Xiangqi Association's grading measures, in force since 1 April 2019, set the ladder out:
特级大师、国家大师、棋协大师、地方大师、一级棋士至十六级棋士。荣誉称号为：荣誉棋协大师。
Grandmaster, national master, association master, local master, then first-grade player down to sixteenth-grade player — twenty rungs in all, with honorary association master as an honorific. And the rung that matters for reading a player is 国家大师, national master: it is the line between professional and amateur.
Weiqi runs a parallel structure of its own under the Chinese Weiqi Association, in dan and kyu grades rather than master titles — amateur dan grades running to 8, above a long ladder of kyu grades below them. I read that structure in the association's published measures as republished in the press rather than on a government host, so treat the numbers as the association's own and the state athlete grade above as the verified one.
Where you will actually meet them#
- Any park, from mid-morning onward. The seven o'clock park belongs to exercise; the boards come out later and stay out all day.
- On pavements and in doorways, particularly around old residential blocks, and usually xiangqi rather than weiqi — it is faster, noisier and more sociable.
- In teahouses, alongside the tiles. The Chengdu teahouse afternoon has room for all of it.
- Standing and watching is completely normal. Board games in China are a spectator activity at street level, and a foreigner in the ring of onlookers is unremarkable.
- Do not touch the board, and do not comment on a move. There is a proverb about it — the true gentleman watches a game in silence — and while it is folklore rather than a rule, the rebuke if you break it is real.
- You will be offered a game if you show any sign of understanding the position. Accepting is the right answer; losing quickly is expected and does not matter.
- Hong Kong and Macau have their own associations and their own heritage lists, so neither the mainland grading ladders nor the 2008 listing describes a board in a park there.
Checked for newer, and the newest is the grading#
Both games have been on the national list since 2008 and I found nothing altering that. The moving part is the sports side: the athlete grading measures and the standards under them were both replaced with effect from 1 January 2025, which is recent enough that older English descriptions of Chinese sports grading are out of date.
The individual event standards sit in an annex to the October 2024 notice, published as an attached document that I could not read from here. So this page gives the framework, the grade titles and the dates, and does not state the competition results required for any particular grade.
Frequently asked questions#
What is the difference between weiqi and Chinese chess?#
They are unrelated games. Weiqi, known in the West as Go, is played with identical black and white stones on a nineteen-by-nineteen grid, and is about surrounding territory. Chinese chess is a capture game with distinct pieces, a river across the middle of the board, a nine-point palace the general cannot leave, and a cannon that captures by jumping.
Is Chinese chess the same as Western chess?#
No. The board is a grid of lines rather than squares and the pieces sit on the intersections; there is a river the pieces relate to differently, a palace that confines the general and its guards, and a cannon with no Western equivalent. The pieces are marked discs rather than figures.
Are Chinese board games officially protected?#
Both weiqi and Chinese chess are on the national intangible cultural heritage list, published by the State Council as notice 国发〔2008〕19号 on 7 June 2008. They appear under the heading of traditional sport, entertainment and acrobatics rather than under any artistic category.
What are the ranks in Chinese chess?#
The Chinese Xiangqi Association's ladder, in force since 1 April 2019, has twenty rungs: grandmaster, national master, association master, local master, and then first-grade down to sixteenth-grade player, with honorary association master as an honorific. National master is the dividing line between professional and amateur.
Are Chinese chess players considered athletes?#
Administratively, yes. Board games are run through a chess-and-card centre inside the General Administration of Sport, and players can hold state athlete grades — international-level sports master, sports master, and first, second and third grade — under measures issued as Order No. 32 in March 2024 and in force since 1 January 2025.
Can I join a game in a Chinese park?#
Watching is entirely normal and nobody minds an audience. If you show that you can read the position you will very likely be invited to play, and accepting is the polite answer. The one thing to avoid is commenting on a move or touching the board while others are playing.