A man in the Hebei providence, an area of Northern China, has gone viral for losing a match of Xiangqi. The match isn’t what made him go viral, though. It’s what he did after.
Xiangqi is one of the most popular board games in both China and Vietnam and has been played for centuries. It’s often called Chinese chess or Elephant chess due to a number of similarities between both games. They’re both difficult for their own reasons.
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Chess grandmasters have gone to great lengths and committed years of their lives to perfecting their craft. The same is true for Xiangqi, as was shown by one man who spent hours thinking about a match while sitting in the middle of a massive storm.
Chinese man goes viral for analyzing Xiangqi match
After losing at around 5pm, the man could be seen urging his competitor to come back to the table after the match in a video from the South China Morning Post.
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Footage shows him sitting there for four hours, with the table looking almost the same as he left it. He was moving the pieces around in stages, moving them back to how he lost.
And, while this may seem ridiculous to some, others have spoken out about his level of dedication and could relate with his feelings.
Chess grandmaster Hans Niemann recounted a time where he had similar feelings, sitting in the rain for hours after a tough loss.
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“In 2019, I was leading the U16 World Youth championships in Mumbai, got food poisoning, lost 3 games in a row. I laid by the pool and it started raining. Then it started thundering, some of my friends tried to drag me inside but I stayed there for hours,” he claimed.
It’s hard to say whether or not the man figured out why he lost the match, but his dedication hasn’t gone unnoticed.
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