Chess in Chinese

Every position, move and legality claim on this page is verified programmatically against our open rules engine, which implements the WXF laws and is tested against the official 110-diagram repetition casebook.

Which game do you mean?

English uses “chess” for one game and qualifies everything else. Chinese does the opposite: 棋 (qí) is the general word for a board game of strategy, and each game is a different kind of 棋. So there is no single translation of “chess”, and which word you want depends entirely on which game you mean.

In mainland China, 象棋 on its own almost always means the Chinese game. Say 中国象棋 when you are standing next to a western chess set and need to be clear, and 国际象棋 for the western game itself — a Chinese speaker will not read “国际象棋” as a variant of the Chinese one, any more than an English speaker reads “Chinese chess” as a variant of theirs.

The one to be careful with is 围棋. It is routinely grouped with chess in English writing, but Go has no pieces that move, no capture of a king, and no relation to either game beyond being played on a grid.

How to pronounce 象棋

Two syllables: xiàng then qí. In English spelling, roughly “shyang-chee”.

• xiàng — the “x” is not a “z” or a “ks”. It is a soft sh, made with the tongue further forward than the English “sh”. Fourth tone: the voice falls sharply, as in an English command.
• qí — the “q” is close to English ch, never “k”. Second tone: the voice rises, as in an English question.

The two mistakes worth avoiding are saying the “q” as a “k” — “shyang-kee” — and putting the stress on the second syllable. Neither will stop you being understood, but the first is the one that gets noticed.

You will also meet the older romanisation hsiang chi in books printed before pinyin became standard. It is the same word.

Writing it: simplified and traditional

象棋 is written the same way in both scripts — neither character was simplified — so the name itself is safe to copy from anywhere. The words around it are not: 国际象棋 is 國際象棋 in traditional, and 围棋 is 圍棋.

The piece names diverge much more, which matters because it decides what you see engraved on a set. Boards and books from mainland China use simplified glyphs; sets from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and almost all tournament diagrams, use traditional. This site uses traditional throughout, and so does the board on it.

The pieces in Chinese

Each side writes its pieces differently. The moves are identical — only the calligraphy differs, which is how you tell the two armies apart on a board where every piece is a plain disc with a character on it. Red is given first.

Three of these are worth a note. The elephant is 相 for Red and 象 for Black, and 象 is the same character as the first half of 象棋 — the game is named after the piece. The cannon is 炮 or 砲 depending on the side, and the second form contains the stone radical, which is what the piece threw before gunpowder. The general is 帥 for Red and 將 for Black: two words for a commander, not a king, which is why English translations say “general”.

The glossary has the full vocabulary — openings, tactics and endgame terms — with characters and pinyin for each.

Saying the rest of it

Enough to follow a game, or to ask for one:

Announcing 将军 when you give check is normal in casual play and is not considered rude, unlike the equivalent habit in western chess.

Where to go from here

If you came for the word and now want the game:

1. What xiangqi is — the game behind the name, in one page.
2. How to play — every piece, and the three rules that surprise chess players.
3. Chinese notation — how moves are written with these characters, which is what you need to read any Chinese book on the game.
4. Play a game — against the computer, with the pieces you have just learned to read.

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