Understanding the Elephant: A Xiangqi Primer Part 1: History of Xiangqi Paperback -

Jim Png was born in Malaysia, but he grew up in Singapore and later went to Taiwan where he finished his medical education and training to become an orthopedic surgeon. His love affair with Xiangqi has lasted for over three decades now. During his school years in Singapore, Jim had been the president of his chess club and also the captain of his Xiangqi team, which had won the Raffles Cup in 1991 and was placed third place in 1993 in the same event. Medicine, the brutal training regiment of an orthopedic surgeon, family, and kids forced him to stop playing competitive Xiangqi. Instead, Jim has found another way of enjoying Xiangqi, by sharing his love of Xiangqi with the non-Chinese speaking world. He does this with www.xqinenglish.com, a website that he launched in 2011. Since then, Jim has singlehandedly uploaded thousands of puzzles, and hundreds of pages onto his website. The website has over 2400 pages at last count. In 2016, he started uploading videos onto Youtube where there are hundreds of videos now. Feeling that he could do more, Jim has embarked on other ambitious projects. Some of the fruit of his labors include the first ever Lexicon of Xiangqi Terms in English, which he hopes to allow non-Chinese speaking people to communicate Xiangqi in their native tongues. He has also translated several ancient manuals, and meticulously researched Chinese history in his translations. He hopes to be able to translate as many ancient manuals as he can. His ultimate goal is to share with the world the beauty of Xiangqi, a way of life. Jim is still working hard at promoting Xiangqi every day, often putting in more hours into it than his day job. Jim Png is happily married and has two children.