The board had already been arranged. The pieces were circular stones, standing in formation atop a wooden battlefield.

“Zuo,” my grandfather told me, “sit.”

I hopped onto the chair across from him and hunched over the table. I examined the circular pieces laid out in front of me as my grandpa pointed to each one.

“Che, Chariot. Pao, Cannon. Ma, Horse…listen!”

I stopped squirming and put down the piece I was about to place atop the stack I was making.

“This is important, Tien-Hui.”

Tien-Hui was my Chinese name. It was the name that only existed for the three-week span of time in which I visited Taiwan. I slipped it on like a pair of loose, wrinkled jeans. Afterward, I would chuck it out of the plane somewhere above the Pacific Ocean, 1,000 miles in the sky. 

“Are you listening?”

I nodded, bouncing up and down in my seat. “Pao, the cannon, jumps to kill pieces. BOOM! The rest are just like chess!” 

My grandpa chuckled lightly, and his eyes twinkled with amusement.

“Henhao, henhao.” Good, good. He gestured toward me with an open hand, “You can go first.”

I surveyed the pieces at my disposal, then pointed to the one in the front.

“What does this do again?”

My grandpa sighed. “Bing, pawn. Moves forward one space.”

“Oh, that sounds weak! What about this one?”

“Chariot. Can move any number of spaces horizontal or vertical.”

“Ooh,” I hummed, then nudged the piece forward.

Before I placed the piece down, my grandpa swept his cannon sideways from its starting position to the center of the board. I stared at the piece for a second, scrutinizing every line of the character, thinking how it looked almost like a rhino with its square head and pointed horn. 

“Why’d you go there?” I asked.

My grandpa grinned. “I cannot tell you. You must figure it out yourself!”

I thought about it for a second but then gave up and returned my attention to my chariot, which I moved sideways. Before I could even retract my hand, however, my grandpa’s cannon soared across the board and took my pawn.

“What? But you were on the other side!”

My grandpa chuckled lightly. “This is a cannon, remember? I can fire it from far distances, so long as I jump over a piece.”

“Ohhh.” So that’s how this game worked.

But just as I started looking for ways that I could take his pieces in return, my grandpa brought his second cannon out and moved it in line with the other, both staring down my king.

“Jiangjun.” Checkmate, he said.

“No way!”

“This cannon,” he said, pointing to the one closer to him, “jumps over the first cannon to take the king. And if you try to stop it by moving a guard in front, then the first cannon jumps over the guard to take the king.”

My hands hovered over the board, looking for a safe place for my king, but I found nothing. I lost.

“How?”

“Double cannon,” he said, “It’s a killer move.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Of course it is. If you had moved your king up before, you could’ve moved it to the side. See? And if you moved your horse up to protect your center pawn, my cannon wouldn’t have been able to take it. See?”

That was my very first lesson. How to stop bad things before they can ever happen: Survey the board before acting. Understand your opponent’s mind better than they do.

 

_____

 

“I’m taking away the Wii,” my mom said. Muosho was the word she used for “taking away.” It was her ultimate power.

“You can’t do that!” 

“You don’t think I can?! Watch me!”

She stripped the power cable from the wall, killing the screen and deleting the progress I had made over the past hour.

“MOM!”

“You want me to take your toys, too?” she asked. I glared at her, trembling from head to toe but trying my best to keep it in. Then she stormed away, taking the Wii with her.

 

There were a lot of fights during that time. Like an ox struggling against restraint, I bucked and kicked against my parents’ efforts to control me. I fought against piano, I fought against chores, and I fought to be like all the other kids at school who had everything I didn’t. I wailed until I lost my voice. I banged my knuckles against my parents’ closed door. I cried until the white carpet underneath turned gray. And I would always be greeted with the same move: Silence. Checkmate. Because guilt would follow, and with tears of regret, I would apologize.

How do I prevent the cannon from taking my center pawn and shaking my defenses? The next time it lines up in the center, keep your patience. Play defense. Rather than heading up to my mom’s room and demanding the Wii back, I thought about why I lost it in the first place. I wasn’t listening to her. That’s why she got mad. But what did she want me to do? Piano. She wanted me to practice piano before I played video games. So I made my way to the piano room, sat down at the bench, and played as the hours ticked by. Her cannon had taken my pawn, and her other cannon was preparing to checkmate me, so I had to move my king up. I had to stay in the game.

When I walked out of the piano room, the Wii was back in its original place.

 

_____

 

“You ready?” my grandpa asked.

I nodded as I placed my last piece on the board, turning the character so that it faced me, just like all the rest. I drummed my fingers on the armrests in rhythm, making sure that each finger touched the surface the same amount of times. It was good luck. It ridded me of my excess nervous energy.

“I’ve been practicing a lot,” I said.

“Ahh, henhao, henhao.” Very good, very good. “Consistent practice is the only way to get better. Now, let’s see how good you are.”

When my grandpa’s cannon positioned itself against my center pawn, I moved my horse up to protect it. It was the exact move he was expecting, but at least the game wouldn’t be over in three moves. At least I had a chance.

The problem was I didn’t know where to go from there. There were too many pieces to manage, too many directions to take. I moved my chariot up and down. I moved my cannon left then right. My fingers darted across the board, like runaways searching for a home. 

He was closing in on me. I could feel it in the way his palms rested gently on the smooth wooden table, not moving an inch until they touched his piece. And I saw it in the way he placed every piece down, light yet forceful, sending ripples across the wooden battlefield. While my pieces were scattered, staring in all different directions, his cannons were prepared to fire, his chariots were ready to fly, and his king was well protected by its royal guards. 

In an effort to put him off balance, I pushed my horse across the river, the dividing line between home and enemy territory. It was a bold move for an expert, a foolish move for me.

My grandfather analyzed the piece, knitting his eyebrows and pushing his knuckles against his chin.

“What does this do?” he finally asked me.

I shrugged.

“Hmmm,” he hummed, nodding.

He moved his elephant up to attack my horse. It was such a powerful move that it sent a chill down my spine, and I immediately retreated to safety. 

Safety, however, was an illusion on this board crafted by my grandpa. He ambushed my horse with all of his pieces so that wherever it moved, he could follow up with a cannon, a chariot, or even a pawn. As my horse scrambled across the board, one after one, my grandpa poured his attacking pieces onto my side. Finally, after my horse was backed into a corner from the other side of the board, my grandpa shoved his chariot next to my king, sealing its doom.

“In the effort to save your horse, you lost your king.” He said. “All of your moves after you retreated were wasted while I took advantage of attacking your horse to position my pieces. You must remember. Every move is precious. Not a single one can be wasted.”

 

_____

 

How do Chinese parents name their kids?

 

I knit my eyebrows. We were sitting at the lunch table in our middle school, the usual gang. I was the only East Asian, and all eyes were on me.

“Okay,” I said, trying to hide my embarrassment. “How do Chinese parents name their kids?”

My friend leaned forward so that everyone could see. “They roll a coin down the stairs, and whatever noises it makes is what the child’s name is. Ching chong! Ding dong!”

The table exploded with laughter. “Ching chong! Ding dong!” Everyone echoed.

“But my name is just Chris!” I protested, thinking that was important. At that time, I told nobody about Tien-Hui.

“It’s just a joke,” they told me.

“Oh, ok,” I mumbled, face burning with shame.

I hung around these people throughout middle school, maybe because I didn’t want to be outcasted or maybe because we had been friends for a long time and I didn’t like the idea of losing them. I kept running from their jokes, just like my pitiful horse, because I was trying to save something that would never work.

Every move in life is precious. Not one should be wasted.

Later that year I set my lunch tray down at a different table. This one was far in the corner, ignored by most, but I was in the same class as Henry, and he had invited me over. 

When I sat down at the table, they were making a list.

“Jefobulus!”

“Pbstabster!”

It was a list of funny-sounding words, and they were creating a dictionary full of them. When I sat down next to Henry, he asked me if I had any in mind.

“Hmm…” I was aware of everyone’s eyes on me, an outsider looking for a way in. “What about Tien-Hui?”

“I like it!” one of them said. “What do you want it to mean?”

“Make it my nickname,” I responded.

 

_____

 

“I hear you won your tournament,” my grandpa said. There was a faraway look in his eye, as he regarded me.

“Second place,” I corrected him. I shifted in my seat. We were sitting in the pale gray kitchen of his new home, a single apartment room more suitable for his age. The heavy summer air filtered in through the window that could only open a crack and settled along the dusty marble kitchenware. Everything else was still. The room, my grandpa, me.

“Second place is fine, too,” he told me.

I shook my head. “I could’ve gotten first. I messed up.”

“Next time,” he assured me. “For now… Tien-Hui.”

I looked him in the eyes.

“Shall we begin?” he asked.

I nodded.

Our fingers rested on the table like tigers lurking in a bush. Our eyebrows were forever narrowed, pointing down at the pieces as they leaped from space to space around the board. We nodded in acknowledgment of each other’s moves, and we recognized what patience looked like, the beauty of every decision. 

I had learned a great deal from my grandpa and his teachings were at the foundation of every move I made, but I had also developed a variety of my own strategies and tricks. I fortified my palace to protect it from cannon fire and chariot raids. I trained my horse to target three different pieces at the same time. I learned how to fire my cannon diagonally by setting traps. 

My moves surprised my grandpa and when I captured his king in the end, he laughed and said, “Henhao, henhao. You have learned well.”

I thought he would be stunned, at least surprised, but instead it was peace and happiness.

“Tien-Hui, listen closely,” he said. “This is the final thing you can learn from me. When you lose, you cannot let it consume you. You must grow from it, take from it only as much as you need, and prepare for the next match.”

I nodded, still exhilarated from my win. At the time, I thought he was trying to comfort me about losing the tournament. In truth, it was no big deal. I didn’t mind losing. After all, every game against my grandpa prior to this one had ended in a loss.

 

_____

 

The words zoule, “gone,” rang in my head like a hollow bell. They meant he would only exist in photographs, never again in front of me, with a board between us. They meant I would never hear henhao, henhao again after I made the right move. They meant we would never again share an unspoken dialogue within our moves, communicating in a way that words could never.

This was a loss I couldn’t take. I felt myself always searching for a way back to the games we played and always coming up empty.

But what my grandpa taught me was not to look back. Take from it what you can, remember it, but keep your eyes on the next game,and as long as one of us is still here, there will always be a next game. Even when there’s nobody else to play against, all you have to do is set the board, move the horse to protect against the cannon, and the words you shared over the games, from ten years ago to one month ago, will echo in the back of your head.