Looking for help from all my Go players

General Go Discussion
1

I’d like to ask you a few questions about Go. Please get back to me

1.How did you first learn about Go?

2.Have you ever watched any literature or movies with a “go” theme?

3.Where do you think Go originated from?

4.If you had to rate the Go atmosphere in your country, what would you give it? (0-5)

5.Have you tried learning Go on your own before…

6.How did your impression of Chinese culture change after learning about Go?

(0 points means it got much worse, 5 points means it got much better)

7.Do you agree to use Go as a brand to promote Chinese culture？(0 points means not supportive, 5 points means very supportive)

8.What do you think is the biggest obstacle to the spread of Go overseas？

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???

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5

“Distract your opponent with our wonderful scents and win every game”

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Hi and welcome to ogs!

  1. From the anime “Hikaru no Go”

  2. Yup! My favorite go-themed movie has been “the match”

  3. East-Asia, i guess the different rulesets have been refined independently across
    japan/china/tibet

  4. Full 5 out of 5, there isn’t many players but the atmosphere in go events is amazing ^^

  5. Not sure how to answer this.. i started learning on my own without knowing any other go players, but the great people on ogs helped me a lot

  6. hmm i dont think it has changed at all, still the same as it was before

  7. I think it is, you can use pretty much anything to promote something. I don’t use fragrances myself, but i don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be possible

  8. In my country, its the lack of exposure. Most people have not even heard about the game :<

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Sorry.That is my mistake.

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Ah yeah, this makes more sense ^^

At first i thought you were in the business of selling or exporting parfumes xD

But yeah, i do agree its a good way to promote chinese culture, i believe CEGO has been promoting go in europe for quite some time now CEGO and EGF: A Decade of Cooperation
Also chinese professional league allows a team of european pros to play in the C-league, which has been great way for european pros to play against chinese pros. And theres also been many other tournaments sponsored by chinese weiqi association, including the world amateur championships and such ^^

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  1. Reading Wikipedia a about the complexity of Chess. Clicked on Go, vaguely recognise the game.
  2. Read or seen zero GO content.
  3. China..
  4. 1
  5. Only this first time
  6. Very little changed. Go tied in well with what I already knew about china. (Taoism, kungfu, etc.
  7. Go is one certainly complimentary when promoting Chinese culture
  8. In the modern age because it has to complete with digital forms of entertainment, or even more interactive and social board games. Historically, because Western society has a lower tolerance for ambiguity. Games like chess were preferable because objectives were crystal clear, checkmates are dramatic, and advantages are usually apparent. GO is more nuanced and ties in better with eastern philosophy (flow etc). The west in religion and philosophy tends towards concrete outcomes and dichotomies. Taoism by contrast resists definition “the tao that can be named is not the true tao”
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  1. on the street, during a travel in Korea, watching old men playing in the park
  2. yes, the drama“the Glory", the Chinese TV series” hikaru no go”, the movie " the match”
  3. china ?
  4. around 2,5 ! lot of enthusiasm, new player coming, lot of amateur competition, not enough gender balanced, not enough space to play
  5. I started learning playing on my own on this server, was the right amount of challenge for me
  6. 3,5 ? go definitely become of the things I can appreciate about the Chinese culture
  7. yes totally!! 5 out of 5 ! but for point of view it’s more Chinese culture promoting go that the inverse ahahah
  8. Local answer!!! not every overseas country has the same problem,
  • France for example the presence of go school as a business in every big city will be very beneficial, to offer this availability to parent to enroll their kids like a normal after school programme, and for adults to have the possibility to learn and train with more intensity and a more structured approach
  • south east Asia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore… it will be to open a professional circuit or a path to become professional, there are lots of go school there, and lot of very good players but no clear professional career outcomes.

and in general visibility and time of course

but maybe the more important to increase the go population is the possibility to meet the game and the option to learn it ( organise go initiation at every event ?!

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1.How did you first learn about Go?
Read the Manga Hikaru no Go

2.Have you ever watched any literature or movies with a “go” theme?
Yes

3.Where do you think Go originated from?
China

4.If you had to rate the Go atmosphere in your country, what would you give it? (0-5)
Cant really say … 3

5.Have you tried learning Go on your own before…
Yes

6.How did your impression of Chinese culture change after learning about Go?
(0 points means it got much worse, 5 points means it got much better)
4

7.Do you agree to use Go as a brand to promote Chinese culture？(0 points means not supportive, 5 points means very supportive)
5

8.What do you think is the biggest obstacle to the spread of Go overseas？
-The competition meaning everything else thats sucks up our attention. Go is not a casual game for most, its a (more or less serious) hobby that takes attention. (Im not saying you cant play go casually, but the people I know, who do, have already invested years to get to that point.)
-Also: Exposing people to the game at a younger age.

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For as long as I can remember as a child, likely from watching my family members, especially my grandpa. When I went to Go schools taking classes, I already knew how to play.

Many.

We actually had no idea, and many historical or archaeological clues pointed to somewhere in the modern northern to eastern China. One of the hypotheses I am currently working on is the early form of weiqi or shape rearranging games came from games for teaching elites about geopolitics and geography in ancient chiefdoms/city states alliances in the early proto-Chinese Neolithic culture. Likely candidate cultures, such as Dawenkou culture (大汶口文化), and Longshan culture (龍山文化), those closer to the coastal area that relied heavily on river and water transportation for goods.

I am currently residing in Taiwan, I’d say 2 to 3. The peak was around the 1970s to 1980s (a lot of advancements for computer Go, Go servers, software, and Ing’s rules, etc. came from this era), and another one in the 1990s to 2000s.

Since I don’t remember how I started learning Go, and often outplayed most of my classmates, I was forced to learn a lot in advance by myself before I learned more systematically later in advanced classes.

I don’t think I can answer this, since I grew up and lived in Chinese or Japanese-influenced cultures since I was a child, and learned Weiqi so early on. I’d say during the time I’d lived outside of East Asia for a while, when I mentioned Go, even if people did not know what the game is, but they often guessed correctly as a mysterious game from East Asia.

I think it was often been done in media, but as a brand, it needs persist and continous exposure for it to have a brand recognition. So if Go cannot easily break into other cultures and become persistant, it won’t work as an added “brand”, but more the other way around, as an associated culture item.

Teachers, and parents who are willing to let their kids to learn Go from an young age later become teachers for the next generations. Influencers can bring fad, but growing a culture need generation after generation of work.

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From Hikaru no Go.

Excluding the aforementioned anime, no.

As far as I know the game originated in the area of modern day China.
I have no opinion on the issue.

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There are no Go teachers here, but I have read books instead in order to learn the rules and learn how to play (Janice Kim’s “Learn to Play Go” series, in particular).

No change, for two reasons:
a) The media via which I learned of the game were Japanese.
b) As far as I know there is no promotion of Go/Baduk/Weiki in my country, made by any official venture of Japan, Korea or China. Even the Comfucius institute which helps organise Go events in other countries nearby (e.g. there are tournaments coming up in Cyprus or Bulgaria in the next couple of months), does nothing similar here.

There is a Japanese festival that is being organised in the past few years where the couple of folks that run the PandaNet National team tend to appear on their own volition to promote Go, but they receive no help from anyone.

Anecdotally, I had asked them if they had tried contacting the embassies and the relevant local institutes and they told me that in most cases the people they talked with claimed to not even know about the game, at all. :thinking:

5 obviously.

How much time do you have? :sweat_smile:

In titles the obstacles are three:
a) Total absense of funds.
b) Everything is left in the hands of hobbists that have to take time out of their own work/life to promote the game, for their own pleasure
c) No centralised organisation for marketing/promotion and teaching.

For example:

It is the first time I hear of such an organisation. I went to google it to learn more and the first result is actually, the article you posted.

They seem to have no website or not other information or mention. I then tried to google “CEGO programs” and found a company with a similar name…

I do not know what’s up with that. :man_shrugging:

P.S.
On a final note, multiculturalism is now on the wane of its popularity, so those three countries - especially China who has a lot of active trade interests here with ports etc - lost a good opportunity in the previous years to push for some sort of introduction of a “foreign cultures lesson” in the public schools, where kids could learn about other cultures and get introduced to their own local art, games, philosofies and general outlook of living.

If they could have funded programs where kids could be taught Chinese, Korean or Japanese in public schools as a third language, a lot of parents would have opted for those, instead of French, German or Spanish.

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People who are interested in go are likely to be interested in Chinese culture and vice-versa. I just checked that in my country, there are about 20 Confucius institutes. They generally propose language courses and conferences, sometimes activities like calligraphy, painting or Taiji Quan, but most of them don’t seem to propose go, nor to talk much to our go federation.

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Seems like its official name in english is “Beijing Zong Yi Yuan Cheng Culture Communication Co. Ltd.”

I dont really know much about them either, only what is written on the contract between them and EGF https://www.eurogofed.org/egf/CEGO_contract.pdf

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1 A friend in a party. A few articles in “science et vie”(defunct science magazine)

2 yes

3 Tibet

4 4,8

5 no

6 no change

7 0

8 go has a step learning curve for beginners

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You could check the European Go Federation website. I believe CEGO is the main sponsor in their activities (like for our professional system).

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Here’s an interview all about the origins and history of Go

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CEGO even has a page on sensei library

Here is the report in 2013 from EGF president indicating they signed a long-term cooperation contract with CEGO

here is the Chinese news from two years later in 2015

And then almost nothing after 2016, and then this report in 2019, indicating need to find alternative sponsors when CEGO sponsorship runs out. Since like it only lasted for a couple of years. When COVID hit, everything seemed to stop. And then this report in 2023, a second contact, but hadn’t resigned anything yet, when 10 years was up, and still negociating in 2024, and hadn’t found anything from 2025.

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1.Hikaru no go. then I play Igowin 9x9 alot

2.Hikaru no Go, the divine move

3.Chinese. But I enjoy Japanese Go equipment most. clamshell stones, shinkaya board

4.1

5.Yes. there is no Go teacher in my country.

6.3

7.0. Go is not limited to Chinese culture nowadays

8.No support from local government, because Go is seen as Korean/Japanese/Chinese board games.Most people still have misconception about Go, they think it is Reversi / Othello.

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From my father. But sadly we didn‘t really play in the family because he was too competitive when I was a child, and so he just blasted me off the board instead of teaching me back then.

yes

ALIENS!

Just kidding :wink: I don’t “think“ Go originated from ancient China, I know it. (i.e. I believe those historians who say it was so :wink:)

2 (Germany)

Yes.

2,5 (I’m European, we use a decimal comma :wink: If you’re USian, read “2.5”)
What I mean is that my impression of Chinese culture did NOT change – I was impressed much already after learning about Laozi/Tao Te Ching, Zhuang Zhou/Zhuangzi, I Ching, etc.

Mh, I don’t know, why not simply promote whatever one wants to promote instead of using one thing to promote another thing? Maybe I just don‘t understand.

I believe that the interest in Go is dwindling even in China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea …? Am I mistaken?
IMO the biggest obstacle is that the huge majority of people enjoy consuming things more that actively doing something with their brains (i.e. challenging their brains, learning something new, etc.).

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