Part 1
"In heaven, there is paradise," goes a Chinese saying, "On earth, there is Hangzhou." Last month [June], I traveled to the world's newest - and largest - Go Center, located in Hangzhou, China. Feng Yun 9p led a group of us, including twenty of her students from her New Jersey Go School, to this just-opened facility, formally known as the Hangzhou Qi-Yuan, three hours southwest of Shanghai. Hangzhou is a popular vacation destination in China, renowned for sculpted ancestral mountains, its Longjing ("dragon well") tea, and the city's centerpiece, the beautiful West Lake.
Standing thirty-four stories high beside the Qiangtang River, the Hangzhou Qi-Yuan is the first of what will be many new buildings in a posh up-and-coming residential region of the city. China's economy is currently booming, and Hangzhou has not been left out of the party. Just behind the Go Center are condominiums that boast some of the highest real estate prices in the city. Next door is a sparkling new 3-story gymnasium with an Olympic-sized swimming pool, ping pong center, pool hall, squash courts, and a full weight room and fitness center. On the way is a second gym with basketball and tennis courts. All around the Center, throngs of new housing developments are rising out of green tarps and bamboo scaffolding.
The Hangzhou Qi-Yuan is not only a Go Center; the 5-star Tianyuan Hotel takes up much of the building, neatly combining a place to play go, stay and eat. "Tianyuan" turns out to be a clever pun: it's the Chinese word for "tengen," the center star point of a go board. My 9th floor room is thoroughly western, with a carpeted floor, dark wood furniture, an enormous television and DVR, and a polished marble-tiled bathroom, complete with shower. The go students live on the 6th floor, housed a cozier four to a room, but with the same basic hotel-like amenities. The mostly-complete building is still under construction. While the downstairs lobby swims in opulence, the second floor is still a construction site and neither the revolving restaurant atop the building - shaped like a go stone, of course, and promising spectacular views of the city and a full wine bar - or the intriguingly titled "Special Combat Room" on the 28th floor are open to the public yet.
We spent our first afternoon playing informal games, where I met some of the Go Camp students who have come from elsewhere in the U.S., including the 10-year-old twins Matthew and Nathan Harwick, from Boulder, CO, shining examples of the great work Paul Barchilon and company are doing there. Louis Abronson, an amateur 6d from San Jose, CA, is accompanied by his wife Amanda, who is not a go player but who is using her time in China to learn Mandarin at a local language school. After dinner back in the Center cafeteria, we retire to our respective rooms to sleep off jet-lag, eager to start our training in the days ahead.
Part 2
It was day two of my weeklong visit to the Hangzhou Qi-Yuan, China's newest and largest go center. While I had come as a guest of the Hangzhou Qi-Yuan itself, from whom we were inviting twelve of its members to this year's [2007] U.S. Go Congress, I actually flew out with Feng Yun 9p and twenty of the students from her Go School in New Jersey, all of whom had come to Hangzhou to study go for the next four weeks. The Hangzhou Qi-Yuan serves as a training ground, 5-star hotel, and cafeteria all rolled into one towering 34-story building.
Even though we were here expressly to play go, our schedule gave us one day off per week to see the sights. A popular vacation destination, Hangzhou is known for its tea, silk industry, and its main scenic attraction, West Lake. Our second day in Hangzhou, Monday, was marked by a field trip to XiXi National Wetlands Park. The morning began with breakfast in the cafeteria. Options included a variety of steamed dumplings, fried egg and ham sandwiches, fried onions, a sweet bean dish, hot rice soup, and milk. Following breakfast, I helped Feng Yun download a copy working copy of KGS on her laptop, as 13-year old Lionel Zhang, an amateur 6d, was due to play a match for the Redmond Senior Cup later in the week. Surfing the web in China, I found I was able to check all my secondary email accounts (Yahoo, Google, etc.) but not my University of Pennsylvania account, which also happened to contain all my U.S. Go Congress correspondence. Oh, well!
We spent the morning and early afternoon at XiXi National Park, China's first and only national wetlands park. The tour was conducted by riverboat, and a guide, who spoke to us in Mandarin, told some of the history of the area (which I, not speaking Mandarin, read about later on Wikipedia). Silk weaving is a time-honored tradition here, and we stopped by a local shop in the park that sold silk artworks and crafts. One of the students, Peter Zhang, turned out to be a shrewd bargainer (in addition to a strong Go player), as he proved to the others last year when Feng Yun's camp was in Beijing, and we all found ourselves turning toward him for last-minute advice.
In the afternoon, we drove from the misty lowlands into the surrounding mountainside, up to Meijiawu Village, where we feasted on an enormous lunch in a local tea house, followed by a delicious sampling of the local Longjing tea, one of the most prized and expensive teas in China (an experience equivalent to drinking Champagne in actual region of Champagne, France).
Monday evening marked the formal Opening Ceremonies of the Hangzhou Qi-Yuan. Our group was among the Center's first guests, along with the dozens of pro players competing in the Chinese City B League Tournament, which the Qi-Yuan was hosting throughout the week. I participated in a press conference joined by Wang Gouping, the Communist Party Committee Secretary and Deputy Mayor of Hangzhou; Wang Runan 8p, the President of the Chinese Wei Qi Association, Ma Xiaochun 8p, the Head Coach of the Chinese National Team, Dong Yinkui, the Director of the Hangzhou Qi-Yuan; and a host of others. We all gave short speeches (mine was translated to the crowd by Feng Yun), followed by a meeting with the local and visiting student players. The event was significant enough that it made the local paper, a copy of which can be found online at http://sports.sina.com.cn/go/2007-06-26/22353003418.shtml (Chinese language). After this it was time for more feasting in one of Hangzhou Qi-Yuan's lavish banquet halls.
Once the festivities ended, I ventured back down to the 4thfloor, where the students were playing or studying go in the classrooms. It was here that I met some of the local Chinese go students, all aged 7-10, and I as quickly learned from some informal games against them (which did not last very long) they were all at least 2-4d in strength. It was a humbling experience, to say the least, and one that most of Feng Yun's students also went through the following day when both groups met to play for the very first time!