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Translation - English The things written on it. It doesn’t seem like it’s talking about chess. It seems like it’s talking about some other matter. On the second day, I went to find the old man again, telling him that I could not understand it. With a big laugh, he said he would explain a bit and remind me. When he started speaking, it gave me a shock. As it turns out, at the beginning, it was talking about a woman and man’s matters. I said that this was the “Four Olds.” The old man sighed saying, “what are you calling old? Isn’t me picking up bits of paper everyday picking up the old? However, I go back home and turn them into other things, selling them for money to sustain myself. Also, the Taoists talks about the yin and yang. This opening borrowed a women and man to explain the Yin and Yang. The Yin and Yang mutually travel and intersect, however should not ever be too aggressive. Too aggressive and it will break. The “break” I use is the break in the context of breaking and snapping.” I nodded. The old man continued by saying that excessive competitiveness leads to breaking. Excessive weakness leads to nothingness. The old man said my Achilles-heal was my excessive aggressiveness. He also said if the opponent is too aggressive, then one must utilize softness to transform the opponent. However, during the transformation process, it should lead to restraining his influence. Softness is not weakness, it’s firm, receptive, and containing. Containing and transforming your opponent lets them enter your influence. This influence requires your building, by doing nothing and everything. Doing nothing is the way. That is to say, it is this principle of chess which ultimately cannot be changed. If you want to change this, then what is played is not true chess; one’s loss from such fallacy wouldn’t even need explaining. One cannot go against the principles of chess, but one must make his or her own strategy for each match. When Chess principle and strategy exist, then there is nothing you cannot do. Speaking of mysterious, it quite truly can be. Think delicately about these things, and you will see in the end it simply is. When the old man finished speaking, I said to that this way of thinking has truly lifted my wisdom, but chess itself has an endless amount of changes; how can one be guaranteed to win? The old man says the key is using the right strategy. The right strategy’s cleverness stems from opportunity. If no one moves, then chess cannot be played. However, as soon as your opponent moves, his or her strategy thus enters the game. If the opponent is an expert then it would be hard to enter the strategy, so you inevitably must take losses. Let the opponent lose a piece and thus let yourself lose a piece. First you must lead to form openings, or find an existing one to focus on. Through this you can hinder his strategy while also building your own. Now, you must resist becoming stubborn or inpatient. Your strategy and your opponent’s must change only at the most opportune moment. This would be when the two-opposing strategy have a linkage. The outcome then would be one strategy covering over an opposing one. If the opponent has small strategies, then you must find a way out. If the strategy is a major one, then you must manipulate and influence it. These basic principles must follow each other in that way. By following the chess principles, other people would then enter checkmate. The old man then said that I only have tactics, and thus the bigger strategy is not quite present. Smaller strategies can calculate a subset of strategy, but not an entire strategy. Smaller strategies simply do not create the environment necessary to do so. He also said my mind was clever. It has a sort of resilient strength. The moment I lost was when my smaller strategy broke away. There was no need to keep playing once that had happened, or else finishing the game to the end would of just been for fun. The old man said his days are not many. No son, no daughter. Having met me, he suggested his chess wisdom should be passed on to me. I said to the old man that his family’s chess playing is so excellent; how come you ended up making a living from collecting waste paper? The old man sighed and said this chess came down from previous ancestors. But there is a rule passed down as well. Doing chess cannot provide the necessities to sustain a living, but doing chess will teach you how to live a spiritual one; a life can be spoiled and thus that is why one must never become too aggressive. He also said he never learned any type of skills that could sustain a living. Upon hearing his situation, I realized perhaps his focus on chess was too aggressive putting him in such a dire situation now. After finishing my talk with the old man, I seem to had understood quite a few chess principles.
***
However, feeling a bit odd I asked, “is it not true that chess principles and life principles have no similarities? Wang, who had the conversation with the old man, said, “I felt that way too and began to feel as if I had been cursed by such a thought. So, I asked the old man if there are major strategies in life like chess has. The old man responded that in chess, there are just a finite number of pieces. The board can only be so big. It is only the principles that are static, but the strategies can vary. Yet, you can see all the chess pieces at once and know their functions. In contrast, one cannot see all aspects of life nor know them. The daily propaganda posters you see on the streets change all the time. You can say that in this way you can see aspects of life, but yet it is only on the surface; it is hard to study past the surface to reach a deeper meaning. Contrasting this with chess, if not all chess pieces are set with their meanings and motivation understood, then there wouldn’t be a chess game to be played.
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Bachelor's degree - The University of Texas at Austin
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Years of experience: 9. Registered at ProZ.com: Feb 2017.
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