Why are the pieces black and red?

The formation of chess is closely related to the dispute between Chu and Han at the end of Qin Dynasty. Chess pieces are divided into bonus and black chess. The handsome side is red and the general side is black, commonly known as "red handsome black general". This also has its origin.

When chess was just formed, people generally regarded the red handsome as Liu Bang and the black handsome as Xiang Yu, that is, the red handsome represented Liu Bang's army and the black handsome represented Xiang's army. It is rumored that Liu Bang led the rebel army to revolt in Mangdang Mountain and personally killed a white rope on the mountain. This is the long-standing folk story of "Gao Zu beheaded the snake". Legend has it that after Liu Bang beheaded the great white snake, an old woman came to the mountain with tears and said that her son was Bai Di's son. She turned into a white snake and played on the mountain, and was killed by Yidi's son. She was very sad. After that, the old woman suddenly disappeared. This story means that the then Qin Dynasty will be replaced by a new dynasty. After killing the white snake, Liu Bang claimed to be the son of Chi Di, and he especially liked red, even the flag of the army was changed to red.

Xiang Yu likes black. All the clothes he wears are black, even the birds and horses he rides are black. The "red handsome black general" probably came from this. The reason why the generals can't meet face to face is well understood by anyone who can play chess. The generals of both sides can't meet directly. This rule is well founded. According to relevant historical records, in the Chu-Han War, Hanwang Liu Bang once swore at Xiang Yu, the overlord of the western Chu State, on Guangwu Mountain, and was nearly killed by an arrow shot by Chu soldiers. Judging from the formation and development of chess, it is the reappearance of ancient wars on the chessboard. The "Chu-He-Han boundary" on the chessboard was named after the struggle between Chu and Han. In the game, if the generals are on the same line with no chess pieces in the middle, the rules stipulate that the player wins, which is like the first person to start shooting the other generals. This is the basis that the general can't face to face.

China has a long history of chess. However, it is still difficult to determine its source. During the Warring States Period, there was a saying that "chess has six treasures" in Song Yu's "Songs of Chu Evocation", which mentioned chess. It has been more than two thousand years now. But at that time, "chess" refers to six games of chess made of ivory, not modern chess.

Liu Boqi is a two-person game, with six players on each side. There are five kinds of chess pieces: owl, deer, pheasant, calf and stopper, one for the first four kinds of chess pieces and two for the latter. Headed by the owl, that is, the coach. "Shuo Yuan" contains "Yong Men Zizhou Qin Yi saw Meng Changjun, saying that" Yan Ju took the first step, playing chess and dancing Zheng Nv ". It can be seen that at that time, chess was popular among dignitaries and literati, and even affected the public. Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty (AD 56 1-578) compiled the Elephant Classic, and called hundreds of officials to explain it in the court. Yu Xin, a litterateur, once wrote Qi Fu and Ru Qi Fu. At that time, "Xiang" was very popular among the court and literati, but it was not a modern chess.

Before the Tang Dynasty, there were only four kinds of table tennis in chess: general, chariot, horse and pawn. After the Tang Dynasty, firearms began to be used in the military. According to the records of the Tang Dynasty, the machine-made stone was used to attack the city, and it was generally shot. Therefore, the word "stone" was still on the side. The military development of weapons has brought new development to the chess that imitates the battle scenes, and gradually reformed the chess into seven arms: general, chariot, horse, cannon, scholar, elephant and pawn, which are basically similar to the arms of modern chess. In the Tang Dynasty, the Tibetan scriptures continued: "In the past, Shennong took the sun, moon and stars as images, and in the Tang Dynasty, cows, monks and Confucianism used guns, horses, generals, scholars and soldiers instead of machines." It can be seen that before the Tang Dynasty, there was no gun in chess, and only after adding a gun did it become the embryonic form of modern chess. What I saw in Censhun's dream and found in the excavation of the ancient tomb were only six arms, including Wang, General (elephant), Strategist (scholar), CNR, Tianma and Infantry, without guns. This was the first year of Baoying in Tang Daizong, so people later called it Baoying chess.

There are 32 "Guang Chess" in Song Chaowu (A.D. 1053- 1 10), which is the same as the existing chess pieces, and the chessboard has 1 1 in both vertical and horizontal directions, which is slightly larger than the existing elephant chessboard. Guangqi put two cannons on the outside of the car. The names and playing methods of the pieces are the same as those of the existing chess, but it did not say whether there was a river boundary in the middle of the board. Chessboards with river boundaries were seen in the late Northern Song Dynasty. At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, Li Qingzhao, a poetess, published a local opera picture with both circus and chess in the Preface to Fighting Horses, which showed exactly the same chessboard figure as it is now. In addition, in Song Hao's poem about chess, there is a description that "there is no hurry outside the river". It can be seen that the chessboard before the Northern Song Dynasty had no river boundary, and the chessboard with river boundary was finalized at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty.

Chess is now flat, but it used to be three-dimensional pictographic. The unearthed ancient tomb described in The Record of Solving Mysteries has a golden bed theater in front and benches everywhere in Jorge Lema, all of which are made of gold and copper, indicating that Baoying's chess pieces in the Tang Dynasty are copper pictographic cubes. Later, among the chess relics unearthed from the ancient tombs in the Northern Song Dynasty, round copper flat pieces with different diameters appeared. On the front are the words car, horse, cannon, general, soldier, elephant and pawn; On the other hand, there are pictures and texts of various shapes. This will be a sitting general with a sword hanging around his waist; The scholar is a female general, wearing a uniform and skirt; Like an elephant; A car is a bicycle with a flywheel; A horse is a prancing horse; The gun is a flying stone; A pawn is a soldier with a spear. Later, the chess pieces on the map were gradually replaced by zigzag chess pieces. Song Huizong Evonne's Gong Ci has the words "White sandalwood is like a small chess table, and the gold characters on the teeth are brighter", which refers to the white sandalwood chessboard and the gold-shaped chess pieces made of ivory.

Liu Kezhuang, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, first described playing chess in a relatively complete chapter. There is a sentence in his 240-word five-character ancient poem "Xiang Yi": "Although small arts are difficult to master, wisdom still has unsolved problems. When you watch the orange team game, you can't stay out of it The two countries are majestic and limited to the big river boundary. Thirty-two children, all perverts. ..... Don't waste a long shot; Extra soldiers should be eliminated. ..... Kunyang ran like an elephant, and Chen Tao lost by bus. Ma Guoling came, and Shi Ji 'an was here. "and other sentences vividly describe the chessboard, chess pieces and playing methods. Chen is a famous contemporary scholar with Liu Kezhuang. In his later years, he compiled some moves and two general moves in The Stone Forest, which is the oldest recorded chess game.

The number of each chess game in chess is gradually transformed according to the evolution of the ancient political system, and the number of soldiers is mainly the layout of the chess game.