International Chess in China

[Bernard]

Almira Skripchenko: Discovering China – Part One

China is a rising chess nation. They have a lot of extraordinary talents, and are doing more to help them than almost any other country in the world. Recently French women's champion Almira Skripchenko spent six weeks in China, returning with a myriad pictures and impressions, which she has agreed to share with us. Here is Almira's first report.



The National Team League is like the German Bundesliga, but they have more teams, nineteen in all. I was part of one of the teams from the Shandong province, one of three Europeans. The rest were Chinese players. I was playing on the first women’s board. Each team has three men’s and two women’s boards. As you may know in China women’s chess is quite important, maybe even more important than men’s chess.

Apart from this we were working a lot on promoting chess. We had a lot of meetings with the sponsors, gave interviews, to television, radio stations. You know, people even started to recognise me on the street in Beijing! Also as part of our promotion we – Xie Jun and I – played a match in AIGO Chess, which is something created by the sponsor. It is like normal chess, but they introduced an additional piece called the cannon, which was placed on b2 and g2, with the pawns starting on b3 and g3. But that is part of report three.

Beijing
Okay, chronologically: first I arrived in Beijing and started to discover China. Even before this trip I was really fascinated by the country, and this was an incredible opportunity to learn more, to visit many cities – I was running around like a tourist, with a huge travel guide, reading about every city I visited, even learning a little Chinese. But during this trip for me it was a wonderful opportunity not only to make friends with Chinese players, but also to understand the way they play chess and how they train. Normally you only meet them at official tournaments, where there is a Chinese squad playing for their country and showing no emotions. During this tournament, in their country, they were wonderful human beings. Also they gave me an insight into their chess training methods – so maybe I can do better against them next time.




Xie Jun is always forcing me to give speeches. In the middle of a ceremony she will say: “Two minutes,� which means that she is going to drag me on the stage and make me speak to the audience. I think she likes to torture me. But at least she is there with me, translating into Chinese. I finished this speech saying I had to learn Chinese, just to find out if she is not saying something completely different. What I realised during my stay in China was that she loves her country very much, but the people love her even more. She is very well known in China, people recognise her in the streets, they say “Oh hello Xie Jun, how are you doing, we hope that everything is fine with your life.�


Best friends: Susan Polgar vs Xie Jun at the Chess Olympiad in Calviá 2004

To see other fantastic pictures taken by Almira during her stay in and around Beijing look at : Guests cannot see links in the messages. Please register to forum by clicking here to see links.

[druidy]

oh my god!!!!!! thanks for sharing the website bernard..... some pictures are so beautiful! geeeeeeeeeee makes me wanna go back to china again despite what happened to me last time in china.

[Bernard]

....... yes, it seems China is a completely different place to what it was probably when you were there last, Liza ... though, from what I can gather from my brother, who is living and working in Beijing now, it seems that at "grass-roots" things are pretty much the same basically, although every one seems happy enough. It will take time, as in all things, for the "new" China to seep through to the grass roots ..... so what happened to you in China last time out, Liza 8O.

From the chess angle, my brother (who, like most "intellectuals" is a chess player !) has got his first job in China as headmaster of a new private school, so I've asked him, like ... when are you going to start a school chess club if the game is such an "in-thing" over there ? After all, internet chess games are not so very different from internet arcade games, (which kids seem to like), except that success in the latter, I suppose, depends rather more on quick thinking than the slower thought processes of the chess game.

Yeah, terrific pics that Almira took in Beijing aren't they, Liza ..... The Great China Wall and the Forbidden City, etc .... they say that the Wall is the only thing on earth that can be seen from outer space !!

[druidy]

my experience wasnt really pleasant... my trip to china was a 3-month work experience.. its fully sponsored and organised trip by my university with the chinese people. everything was fine thru out my visit there.. but not until my departure day, they stopped me and my friend from going back to australia.. so we watched our flight took off without us (gee my friend she was crying and said she wanted to go home).. we had to stay in shanghai for extra week to sort our visa problem with the immigration department. our visa was issued to us cathegory X, apparently that visa cathegory was newly introduced. and no one told us, that we have to apply for pr when we step into china. we went to china in a group of 8, and only two of us had the problem.. so.. me and my other aussie friend was stuck in shanghai for few days to sort out the visa problem. there was another japanese student, who wasnt with us, but in the same possition like us. The police said we had to pay a fine of $5000 each.. I had to negotiate with them, and told them that we are just student, we are not rich and did not have a job, we can not afford to pay that money. the police refused and told us that they have to put us into jail, so I asked, how long we will have to be in jail? one of the bastard said.. 5 days.. each days is equal to $1000. I answered him with my broken chinese .. okay.. just throw me into jail and pls provide me extra pillows. when I was speaking and negotiating with the police, my aussie friend had no idea what we were talking about. we had problems with the taxi driver too.. they wanted to charge us more because i had a westerner with me.
anyway.. the police insisted us to pay $5000 and I said no money.. and they made us to go to get help from our embassy.. and i went to malaysian embassy.. those people in the malaysian embassy did not care to help. those people in australian embassy told my friend, she has to pay the money to get out. so.. we went back to the immigration department, and told the police that the embassy refuse to help us.. they were shocked that the aussie embassy did not help my friend. anyway, its thru 3 or 4 days negotiation.. they eventually issued us a new visa without paying anything. then we rebook the airticket, and head home.. in the airport, we saw the japanese girl, so i went and talked to her, she can speak fluent chinese! she told me that the japanese embassy borrowed her $2500, and she settled the problem with that money.

[Bernard]

....... wow ! what a nightmare of an experience, Liza ... it reminds me of a similar experience I had on my last visit to Singapore. Just before I left UK, I received a national insurance pay-off cheque from the Saudi Arabian govt. made out in US dollars against the American Citibank. I checked with the S'pore Tourist Board in London before setting off and they told me there were three branches of the bank in Singapore so I said, "okay, no need for travellers cheques". When I arrived in S'pore, first day there I went to the Orchard Road Citibank branch to cash my cheque and the manageress told me "oh, no, you have to fly to New York to cash this !!" ..... so there I was stuck in Singapore for three weeks over the Christmas holiday with £20 in my pocket! Lived on bread and water for the first 10 days then, like you, I went to the British Consulate for help and, whilst they did go through the motions of helping me (like ringing up the bank manageress and upsetting her so that no way was she going to help me), when "push came to shove" and I was stuck at the hotel with a £250 restaurant bill on my final day, and the credit manager refusing to accept an English cheque or the Citibank cheque, and threatening me with imprisonment in Changi Jail, and I not even having the money to pay the airport tax so that I could leave, I rang the Consulate one final time to be told, "Sorry, the Welfare State stops at Dover!!" The only people willing to help were the Pakistani lady at the travel agency who sent a special courier to the hotel in the last hour with S$4 for the airport tax, and a car to take me to the airport, and the Chinese girls on the hotel staff who gave me a pack of sandwiches and a bottle of water. To make it worse, I caught Asian 'flu on a Singapore bus on my last day ... just like I did at Labuan last time out ! Why do I always catch Asian 'flu when I visit SE Asia ? For all the "weather" we get in uk, I never even get so much as "a sniffle" while I'm home ! :lol:

[druidy]

oh my.. its sure hell of an experience.. the thing for me different is.. we just had to negotiate with the police and pretend no $$ but we actually can pay it.. Kate, is another girl.. agreed with me that we will try to fight till the end.. my father on the other side rang me and told me to pay them and get out of that country.. i could use my credit card and stuff.. but no.. because at the moment when they show me the law booklet they printed out for visa cathegory X, the line says "offender might pay fines up to $5000 and jail or both" I took the gamble with the word "might" to me, it doesnt mean will be, or definate.

your experience is horrible.... If I live in singapore i will lend you some $ geeee.. horrible experience. I can know how the hotel manager treated you too.. hate those feeling

[druidy]

yeh you get flu when you are overseas because your body is sensitive to the environment change.. there are always different bugs in different places.. your body does not recognise the tropical bugs and so it tried to fight it off from your body.. so you get sick.. as soon as you recovered from it, your body will be immune to that bugs.