Tezhi Luzhanqi - Chinese army chess
Around 1980, I bought in a Chinese food shop, also selling a few other
things from China, a little game. The rules with the game were in Chinese;
there were 20 read pieces and 20 green pieces, each made of a rectangular
piece of wood, and the board was made of paper. In 1996, a colleague, Richard
Tan, was kind enough to translate the rules: the game was related to the
(commercial) game of StrategoTM. The two players do not get
to see the type of pieces of the opponent, and best is to use a referee
when two pieces meet: the strongest piece survives and the weakest is taken
off the board. Purpose is to capture the flag of the opponent. The game
also features bombs, roads for faster movement, and missiles.
In 1998, my brother, Maarten Bodlaender visited China, and brought as
a gift a little game for me. This appeared to be a different version of
the same game: the board is the same, the rules are the same. Pieces were
made of plastic, and where the older set had drawings of the pieces and
Chinese characters, the new set denoted pieces with only with Chinese characters,
and the board was also made of plastic.
Below, you see photo's I made of these two sets. Larger photo's appear when you click on
the `thumbnail-size' pictures.
See also:
Written by Hans Bodlaender.
WWW page created: November 27, 1998. Last modified: September 8,
1999.
