Peking University, Apr. 13, 2013: Peking University won the 27th annual university chess and bridge game- “Jing Hua Cup”, beating the opponent Tsinghua University on 46.5-39.5 this Saturday, PKU’s 7th consecutive victory against its biggest rival.

 
Similar to the Boat Race between British top universities-Oxford and Cambridge in London, and even contending at the same time, a chess and bridge game takes place between the two top Chinese universities-Peking University (PKU) and Tsinghua University (TSU), and the current score stands at 18 to PKU, 9 to TSU.

 
Started in 1987, “Jing Hua Cup” is an annual competition held on the first Saturday of April. It attracts students and staff to play Chinese chess, go, chess and bridge.

 
Qian Shangwu, an 84-year-old retired professor of Physics, attends the game every year and has played bridge on behalf of PKU for 27 times. Some younger members of the two teams have also joined in this activity for more than one year. Li Xiaopeng, leader of PKU student chess team, said that he would do his best to make chess flourish in PKU.

 
This competition is also a tie connecting the young with the old. Three veterans, Liu Yuanbo, Tian Ye and Wu Qi, though graduated but still concerned about the game, came back to school and provided contestants with directions and tactics. To them, “Jing Hua Cup” was not just a competition, but a platform to communicate and share experiences. PKU chess and bridge team was more like a family, and gave them precious memories of campus life. In PKU, “Chess” is a public course and has four excellent and world-famous assistants, including chess Grand master Wang Hao, three-time chess Chinese champion Ding Liren and Zhao Xue, who won bronze in the women’s chess game, and the youngest ever to win two-time Women’s World Chess Champion Hou Yifan .

 
Hou, freshman from School of International Studies, was also a member of the “Jinghua Cup”. In her point of view, the race was not only a competition between PKU and TSU, but also a platform to enhance mutual communication and interaction. As to the race format, she thought it was a good melting pot of cultural significances of the chess and bridge games. As a teaching assistant of the “Chess” course at PKU, she was happy that chess and bridge game enjoy such a high popularity among the students and many whizzes could be found in the campus.

Background info:

The Boat Race is an annual rowing race between the Oxford University Boat Club and the Cambridge University Boat Club, rowed between competing eights on the River Thames in London, United Kingdom. It is also known as the University Boat Race and the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, or by a title that includes the name of its current sponsor (from 2013, the BNY Mellon Boat Race). It usually takes place on the last Saturday of March or the first Saturday of April.(link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boat_Race)

Written by: Ji Fan
Edited by: Zhao Xiaowei, Armin Reinartz
Source: http://pkunews.pku.edu.cn/xywh/2013-04/15/content_269030.htm