Qí pǐn 棋品
Ranks of Go Players by 柳惲 (Liǔ Yùn, 465–517, 梁, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A short Liáng-dynasty treatise on the ranking of wéiqí 圍棋 (Go) players, traditionally ascribed to Liǔ Yùn 柳惲 (465–517), the Liáng official, calligrapher, qín-master, and Go-master. The full text — itself a Sòng anthology of fragments — survives in a single-juàn recension preserved in Tàipíng yùlǎn 卷 753 (game-section) and the Bàichuān xuéhǎi 百川學海. The original Liáng Qí pǐn ordered some 278 named Go players into nine grades (pǐn 品) by ability, on the explicit model of the contemporary Shī pǐn 詩品 of Zhōng Róng 鍾嶸 and Shū pǐn 書品 of Yǔ Jiānwú 庾肩吾 — three works that together form the San pǐn trio of Liáng aesthetic-evaluative discourse. According to Liáng shū 21, Liáng Wǔdì himself ordered the compilation of the Qí pǐn; Liǔ Yùn was the principal compiler with Liǔ Sǐ 柳偲 as a possible collaborator.
Abstract
The text in present transmission consists of (i) a substantial preface (xù) and (ii) several short biographical-evaluative notes on individual ranked players. The preface opens with the philosophical justification of wéiqí (the yì 弈): “Yì zhī shí yì dà yǐ zāi 弈之時義大矣哉” (“the importance of yì to the season-and-occasion is great indeed”) — and develops a Confucian-Daoist argument that yì embodies the xīzhēng 希徵 (subtle-signs) and qízhèng 奇正 (unusual-and-orthodox) of the Yìjīng (Book of Changes): “jìng zé hé dào, dòng bì shì biàn 靜則合道，動必適變” — “when still it accords with the Dào, when it moves it must adapt to change.” The preface invokes the famous epithets of wéiqí: Zhī Dùn 支遁 (Zhī Gōng) called it shǒu tán 手談 (hand-conversation); Wáng Tǎnzhī 王坦之 (Wángshēng) called it zuò yǐn 坐隱 (sitting-reclusion). The preface then sketches the historical genealogy of high players (HànWèi famous worthies, JìnSòng eminent gentlemen) and asks the emperor — Liáng Wǔdì — to listen to court in the morning and turn in his leisure to this lesser art (xiǎo dào 小道), ordering Liǔ Yùn to “compile the names and ranks of players in detail, that the deep-feeling-and-essential-principle may be passed to later generations.” This is the canonical late-Liáng justification of pǐn-criticism as Imperial-sponsored cultural project.
The biographical notes preserve fragments of several entries:
- Jiāng Bīn 江霦 and Wáng Huī 王恢 (read 土恢 in the Kanripo recension, a clerical slip for 王恢): ranked first-grade in qí, fifth-grade in the Way (dào).
- Yáng Xuánbǎo 羊玄保, Huángmén shìláng 黃門侍郎 under the Sòng, third-grade. The text preserves the famous anecdote of Sòng Wéndì 宋文帝 (Liú Yìlóng) playing Go with Yáng with a commandery as the stake, which Yáng won and was duly appointed Governor of Xuānchéng 宣城; the courtly exchange about the “golden ditch and the bronze pool” is recorded verbatim from the Sòng shū.
- Dào Gài 到溉 (sixth-grade), and his celebrated session before the emperor with Zhū Yì 朱异 and Wéi Àn 韋黯, in which the three “compared positions, weighed the configuration, and replayed the board without a single road’s error.”
- Lù Yúngōng 陸雲公, who in the Dàtóng 大同 reign-period (535–546) was summoned by Wǔdì to verify the Qí pǐn — and the famous anecdote that Lù’s eight-year-old son Lù Qióng 陸瓊 replayed a Go board in front of guests “and thereupon the capital styled him Shéntóng 神童 (Marvellous Child)”; on Zhū Yì’s recommendation he was summoned to court, where Wǔdì was impressed by his bearing.
The transmission is fragmentary: of the original 278-name list, the surviving recension preserves only a handful of marquee entries. The original Qí pǐn would have organised players into nine grades along the jiǔ pǐn 九品 model — a direct parallel to the WèiJìn Nine-Rank System and to Zhōng Róng’s Shī pǐn (which has only three grades) and Yǔ Jiānwú’s Shū pǐn (nine grades). The composition is dated to 505–517: 505 is the earliest plausible terminus by reference to Liǔ Yùn’s appointment as Shàngshūpúshè 尚書僕射 and Liáng Wǔdì’s accession to Go-patronage; 517 is Liǔ Yùn’s death.
Translations and research
- Wéi Lóng 韋龍. Qí pǐn jí yán-jiū 棋品及研究. Beijing: Zhōng-huá shū-jú, 1985. [The standard modern Chinese critical edition.]
- Pinckard, William. The Way of Wei Qi: Encounters with Go in the Chinese Classics. New York: Kiseido, 2009. [English-language survey; treats the Qí pǐn as the foundational document of premodern Go criticism.]
- Iwamoto Kaoru 岩本薫 et al. (eds.). Igo no rekishi 囲碁の歴史. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2004. [Japanese survey of Go history including the Qí pǐn transmission.]
- Egan, Ronald. The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006. [Treats the San pǐn trio (Shī pǐn, Shū pǐn, Qí pǐn) as a co-emergent late-Liáng aesthetic-discourse genre.]
- Mao Tao 毛濤. Zhōng-guó wéi-qí gǔ-pǔ jí-chéng 中國圍棋古譜集成. Beijing: Rén-mín tǐ-yù chū-bǎn-shè, 1998.
Other points of interest
The Qí pǐn is the earliest preserved Chinese treatise on wéiqí criticism and the locus classicus for the two great epithets shǒu tán 手談 (“hand-conversation,” from Zhī Dùn) and zuò yǐn 坐隱 (“sitting-reclusion,” from Wáng Tǎnzhī) that defined the aesthetic of Go for the entire premodern Chinese tradition. The work is also a major historical source for the cultural-political prestige of Go at the Liáng court under Wǔdì, who is reported to have ranked between third and fifth-grade as a player and to have spent enormous courtly time on the game. The text is the foundation document of the Chinese qípǔ 棋譜 (board-record) and qípǐn tradition.