68. When 2 dragons claim a board - (La Joueuse de Go) 'The girl who played Go' by Shan Sha

The game of Go or weiqi is an interesting game. On the surface it is as logical as a cold hard scientist in love with nothing but mathematics. You have a board containing exactly 361 co-ordinates or points. And exactly 361 stones that fit nicely on all of those co-ordinates. And yet, a simple rule guarantees chaos – You can never have it all. Either you never touch the board or you must learn to share it. For most people in the world that is life. And the sharing of things lead to problems that need resolving. In the world of absolutes ruled by black and white, WeiQi or Go should be the perfect game but it never stops to amuse me, how many people get stuck on the very first move. All their mathematical concepts of logic breakdown before their very eyes. And what was so orderly just seems to vanish into nothing. Which is interesting, because the game still follows some very basic rules of physics like ‘for every action there’s an equal opposite reaction’. For every one stone placed on the board, the opposing player will place its equal opposing stone reaction. But where is that stone? You may ask as you see that the counter-move doesn’t exactly mirror the first move. Indeed, like a stealthy ninja, the stone is there, waiting to be used in the future elimination of a stone that hasn’t even been thought of yet. In this the game is more than just stones on a board. It is a reflection of life itself trying to resolve itself by way of moments in time and not minutes in time, as two opposing dragons fight for the right to claim the board as part of their respective individual reality. One good example of this, is the novel ( La Joueuse de Go) The girl who played Go by the author Shan Sha. Set in Manchuria during the 1930’s, it is essentially a basic story of two people from two different worlds and opposing countries, who through the powers that be, meet and play a game of Go (weiqi) and ultimately romantically die together. While the actual game of Go or weiqi within the book is okay… There is another more important game of Go being played in the book that some people have noticed, but tends to get missed in the reviews. Looking deeper, beyond the obvious, each chapter alternates between the two first person viewpoints. The girl’s chapter starts first like a black stone on the board. The second chapter belongs to the boy. He is the white stone. Within each chapter, the first couple of paragraphs give a strong indication of what the move would look like on a go board had the board been Manchuria. Shan Sha is the Girl who played Go and her novel is the game laid out symbolically in story form, as two logical entities with their own versions of logic, battle and sometimes love within her for domination. With the end of things having nothing to do with the numbers, mathematics or science. But resolved by its own final pattern.