How did chess develop in Sui and Tang Dynasties?

During the Baoying period in the Tang Dynasty, there was a man named Censhun. He suddenly heard the deafening drums in the middle of the night one day and couldn't help but wake him up. He thought, now is a peaceful and prosperous time, how can there be drums? Did you hear it in your dream?

The next day, Censhun went to ask his neighbor. Sure enough, the neighbor didn't hear the drums. He thought he was dreaming, always thinking about whether it was good or bad to hear them!

A few days later, CenShun lost in thought, during which he dreamed of two armies, one black and one red.

The drums are deafening. CenShun watching, while hearing the two sides fighting, while shouting slogans:

The heavenly horse flew obliquely for three stops, the generals ran everywhere, and the chariots went straight into the sky and did not return. The sixth place was not good.

The fighting was fierce. In the sound of drums, the generals of both sides dispatched troops on the city wall to direct the soldiers to fight fiercely. The mighty chariots, cavalry brigades and long-range catapults repeatedly exerted their strength. CenShun see blood boiling, high interest. In this dream, the Red Army won.

After several days in a row, Censhun dreamed of the battle of the Rossoneri. Because of his obsession with dreams every day, Censhun became isolated and weaker.

Later, Censhun got drunk and was discovered by his family and friends. So, everyone dug up the ground of Censhun's house and found an ancient tomb below. In fact, there is a chessboard made of metal in the ancient tomb, and the pieces have been arranged, waiting for people in the past to play chess.

Baoying is the year number of Li Yu in Tang Daizong, and it was used in 762-763. This is a story about the chess score written by Niu Sangru, the prime minister of the Tang Dynasty.

Emperor Taizong and Li Shimin advocated chess very much, and Wu Zetian further promoted it. The social fashion at that time attached great importance to playing chess. Whether a scholar can play chess or not and how good he is are all related to his position in society.

Di, a famous minister in the Tang Dynasty, used chess to solve the current situation, which was the first time that chess served politics. Bai Juyi, a famous poet in the Tang Dynasty, was very conceited because of his superb chess skills. He once wrote a poem "chess is invincible, poetry is ashamed." At the same time, Bai Juyi is also a chess enthusiast, in which "soldiers run like cars" is his famous sentence of reciting chess.

Bai Juyi's wife is the younger sister of Yang, an important figure in the Niusangru Party. Because of this relationship, Bai Juyi once wrote an article "Ba Qiong Ren" for Niu Sangru in "Mystery Records", and wrote the chess system of the Tang Dynasty in the form of a novel for the first time, which reflected Bai Juyi's poems from a distance and added luster to the chess history of the Tang Dynasty.

The main idea of Bajiong Man is that there is a Bajiong man who has an orange orchard at home. He picked all the oranges, leaving only two big oranges. The bajons took it off and cut it open.

Every orange has two old people playing chess.

Orange Chinese opera has not only become the theme of later novels and operas, but also the theme of many poets, and the titles of the famous chess books "Secrets in Orange" and "Music in Orange" have also come from this.

Bai Juyi's poem "Twenty Poems Living in Peace and Spring";

Where is the deep spring, deep spring player. Fight first to break your eyes, and six will fight into flowers. Drums should be thrown at the pot and horses, and soldiers should rush to the car to play.

The biggest advantage of playing chess is that it is long and oblique.

This poem, written in 829 AD, is considered by the history of chess as an important material to reflect the chess style in the Tang Dynasty. Chang 'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty at that time, was a world-famous bustling metropolis, and the "players" mentioned in Bai Juyi's poems were actually private clubs of nobles.

These private clubs set up popular games and entertainment programs at that time. In the poem, "Soldiers rush like cars" refers to chess. In the Tang Dynasty, not only specialized chess clubs appeared, but also the materials for making chess tools were quite luxurious, which made the scope of chess players limited to the dignitaries in the Tang Dynasty, and also made it difficult to popularize chess skills to the people.

The prime minister of the Tang Dynasty, Niu Monk-ru, wrote a description of chess in his "Wonderful Books":

The Golden Bed Theatre is filled with Jorge Lema, all made of gold and copper.

From this document, we can see that the literati in the Tang Dynasty focused on exquisite chess tools, which shows how luxurious the chess style was at that time.

As we all know, chess tools refer to chess pieces and chessboards, both of which are indispensable tools for playing chess.

According to the records of Niu Sengru, the chessboard materials used by scholars in the Tang Dynasty are gold, ivory and ebony. The chess pieces are made of gold, jade, rhinoceros horn and ivory.

These precious materials are expensive and hard to find. People make these materials into chess, purely for entertainment. There is no doubt that the status of users of these tools is self-evident. Those people are either rich or expensive, which is definitely beyond the reach of ordinary people.

The economy of the Tang Dynasty was very developed, and the national strength at that time was also very strong. Among them, the luxury and enjoyment of song and dance and banquet games are regarded as symbols of fashion and status. This game style started from the court, and the upper class was keen to participate, which gradually developed into a social fashion.

Not only Bai Juyi likes chess, but other poets in the Tang Dynasty are also obsessed with it. Liu Yuxi, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, said in his On Books:

Therefore, I dare to reprimand people with six arts, but I dare not reprimand people with six blogs.

In the Tang Dynasty, people were proud of being good at chess and ashamed of not being good at it. Whether a person can play chess or not is often related to his position in society, which is the chess style in the Tang Dynasty.

Under the guidance of this social atmosphere, chess has overwhelmed the more literate Go and stood out from the board game, becoming the most popular game.

In the Tang Dynasty, playing chess was an important symbol to show people's social status. Take Bai Juyi as an example. He knew nothing about games when he was young. However, with the promotion of official positions, middle-aged and elderly people have become game lovers, which shows that society advocates chess.

During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the number of chess participants, the wide geographical area, the universality of the social level and the profound spiritual connotation were unmatched by other cultural activities. Chess went deep into the social life of Sui and Tang Dynasties, forming its later scale and momentum, which has its own profound historical and cultural roots.

Looking at the chessboard of chess, there are two most striking places. First, on the whole, it is divided into two equal sides, nine vertical and five horizontal, with the "Chu River and Han boundary" opposite in the middle. Another highlight is that there are line segments in the center of the bottom line at both ends to form a "Tian" pattern.

These two combinations are inseparable from nine. The former is a metaphor for the Ninth Five-Year Plan, and the latter, as an echo and supplement of the Ninth Five-Year Plan, means "the land of nine places", with nine intersections, also known as "Nine palaces". In chess, the son of heaven is represented by a general. Both sides of the river boundary are the center of the "Ninth Five-Year Plan" controversy, so it attracts people's attention.

Jiao Xun, a philosopher in the Qing Dynasty, later said: "In the chess game, there are nine players in each game and five players in each game."

This means that the line on this side of the river boundary is vertical, and the line on the other side of the river boundary is vertical. Why isn't it vertical and vertical? Why vertical nine? What's so particular about this?

According to the simple traditional cultural concept in ancient times, "vertical" means high, "nine" means extreme, and nine vertical means the highest. Nine days, nine days, nine days, nine days, nine days and so on all have extremely high meanings. Horizontal refers to the width and orientation, and five horizontal refers to the square and center, which means that all orientations are included, and the width is infinite.

The Ninth Five-Year Plan, which consists of vertical nine and horizontal five, represents the world, that is to say, the throne. Ancient novels and sayings often say "within the Ninth Five-Year Plan" and "within the Ninth Five-Year Plan", which means to be the son of heaven in the position of emperor. It can be seen that the knowledge here is not small!