Secrets Inside the Orange

Secrets Inside the Orange (Chinese: 橘中秘, also printed as 桔中秘; pinyin: Jú zhōng mì) is a xiangqi manual compiled by the Ming-dynasty player Zhu Jinzhen (朱晉楨) and first printed in 1632, the fifth year of the Chongzhen era. With the later Plum Blossom Manual (梅花譜) it forms the pair that Chinese writers call "the orange and the plum" (橘梅). The book is best known for its systematic treatment of the cannon-versus-cannon openings, for the practical endgames collected in its later volumes, and for its first complete game — the horse sacrifice that mates on Red's thirteenth move.

Title

The title means "secrets inside the orange" and alludes to a Tang-dynasty tale of chess-playing immortals. In the story "The Man of Baqiong" (巴邛人) from Niu Sengru's (牛僧孺) collection Records of the Strange (玄怪錄), a householder in Baqiong cuts open two unusually large oranges and finds two white-haired elders inside each, playing at 象戲 (象戲); one of them remarks, "the joy inside the orange is no less than that of Mount Shang" (橘中之樂，不減商山). Later Chinese writing derives from the story both the byname "orange play" (橘中戲) for xiangqi and the titles of Ming manuals such as Secrets Inside the Orange.

The compiler's elder brother described the naming in his preface: after reading the manuscript he exclaimed that it was "the secret treasure inside the orange" (此橘中秘寶也), and "gave it the name Secrets Inside the Orange" (顏其名曰橘中秘). Both characters of the first word appear in the tradition: the 1632 title page is described with 桔, while the manuscript copy in the Palace Museum and the 1936 Shanghai printing use 橘.

The compiler and the prefaces

The endgame preface is signed "compiled by Zhu Jinzhen, style name Jinzhi, of Wuyuan" (武原朱晉楨進之甫輯), and the complete games are headed "Zhu Jinzhen of Donghai, style name Jinzhi, compiler" (東海進之朱晉楨輯). Two prefaces by his elder brother survive. One is dated to the spring of 1632 (崇禎壬申孟夏) and signed "the layman Wuzhu" (無住居士); the other, printed in the 1936 edition, is dated "the year zhaoyang zuoe" (癸酉, 1633) and signed by Zhu Yiwei of Donghai (東海朱翼維).

Both prefaces tell the same two stories about the compiler. On a campaign in Yunnan (奉節滇南) he turned chess to military use, saying afterwards, "I merely applied the way of the elephant game to the conduct of war" (予僅以象戲之道施諸行軍耳). During the crisis of 1629, when his brother commanded the defence of the Guangning Gate (廣寧門) in the capital against what the preface calls a mob of scoundrels (群醜), the younger man showed no alarm, comparing the situation to a game: "facing the enemy is like facing a guest across the board" (與敵對壘如與客對枰耳). The 1632 preface closes on the same image: "though the orange is narrow, one feels the world wide; though victory and defeat are divided, one forgets the thought of contention" (橘中雖隘，自覺天地之寬；勝負雖分，竟忘角逐之想).

Plan and contents

The editorial rules (凡例) state the plan in a single line: "four volumes in all; volumes one and two are complete games, volumes three and four are endgames, and the volumes are in no disorder" (全部四卷，一卷二卷全局，三卷四卷殘局，卷帙並無舛錯). The complete games are divided by move order and odds: twenty games with the first move (得先), thirteen games yielding the first move (讓先), and eighteen games at odds (讓子) — ten at the odds of a horse and eight at the odds of both horses. Most of them belong to the two cannon families, the same-direction cannons (順手炮) and the opposite-direction cannons (列手炮); the screen-horse formation, the single-horse formation and the elephant opening also appear. Each game is given as a main line with numbered variations (變) branching from it, and the editorial rules explain the score: the figures for "level" moves and for the advances and retreats of horses, advisors and elephants name a square, while the figures for chariot, cannon and pawn advances count the points moved.

The front matter carries instructional verse as well. Songs for the openings (歌訣) give a stanza each to the central cannon, the advisor's-corner cannon, the flying cannon, the elephant opening and the method of breaking it. The Complete Instructions (全旨) summarise the doctrine in prose: "though chess is a small art, its meaning is subtle; one gains only through concentration, and only by following method can one surpass" (棋雖曲藝，義頗精微，必專心然後有得，必合法然後能超), followed by maxims for each formation — "with the same-direction cannons, first make the chariot mobile; with the opposite-direction cannons, secure the advisors" (順手炮，先要車活；列手炮，須補士牢) — and for the conduct of the game — "sacrifice material only for the initiative; do not fall behind in capturing" (棄子須要得先，捉子莫教落後), "when ahead, do not be hasty; when the chariot is gone, calm the mind; when strong, seek the win; when weak, seek the draw" (得先時，切忌著忙；失車去，還教心定；子力猛，必須求勝；子力寬，即便尋和). The 1936 printing opens the games with a diagram of the starting array and a verse on the movement of the pieces, from "the general never leaves the nine-palace" (將軍不離九宮內) to "the pawn advances only one point, and once across the river has no fixed path" (惟卒止能行一步，過河橫進退無蹤).

Complete games

The horse sacrifice

The first game of the first section, "Same-direction cannons, ranked chariot against filed chariot, sacrificing the horse" (順炮橫車破直車棄馬局), is the manual's signature lesson and is known in later writing as "the thirteen-move horse sacrifice" (弃馬十三着, also 弃馬十三招 or 舍馬十三招). Red opens with the central cannon and a ranked chariot, allows Black to take a horse with 6... c2+7, brings the chariots to the sixth file, and mates with 13. C8=5 on Red's thirteenth move.

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The notes attached to the modern transcription record that Black's capture with 6... c2+7 is now considered worse than 6... a6+5, and that 4... r8+6 has long since been replaced by 4... r8+4; the line itself survives as a trap and a lesson in the value of open lines.

Screen horses against the central cannon

The last game of the first section, "Screen horses break the central cannon" (屏風馬破當頭炮局), is the manual's venture into the formation that the next generation's literature would make its own: Red develops both horses to the screen-horse points, and Black answers with the central cannon (1... c8=5), so that the game becomes a study of the same matchup that the Plum Blossom Manual later put at the centre of its eight games on the screen horses. The recorded line runs to 17. +R=5, when the front chariot takes the advisor on the central file.

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Endgames

The endgame section has its own preface, the 殘局說 ("on endgames"), signed by Zhu Jinzhen himself. It argues that endgames are the most teachable part of the game: "endgames complete what the play of full boards leaves unfinished. A full board has many pieces and is hard to understand; an endgame has few pieces and is easy to grasp, and is all the more worth learning from" (棋有殘局，補全盤之未備也。全盤子多而難明，殘局子少而易悟，尤可取法). The author distinguishes the two errors of judgement that endgames expose — attacking when a draw should be held, and agreeing to a draw when a win is there — and says that he collected his material from older scores, "working from the old manuals with all my thought ... one hundred and forty positions in all, adding explanations in five cases out of ten and correcting mistakes in three" (是集，余從舊譜，殫精畢慮……共得百四十局，伸其說者十之五，訂其謬者十之三), with the aim that "the won should be won and the drawn drawn" (使勝者必勝，和者必和). The received manuals contain 137 positions rather than 140, a discrepancy noted by modern editors.

The positions are catalogued by material — double chariots, chariot and cannon, single chariot, horse and pawn, cannon and pawn, and so on — and each is given a short solution with the result marked as a win or a draw. Among them is Borrowing the Cannon to Use the Horse (借炮使馬), an endgame in which a single horse does the attacking and a cannon supplies the final check. In the recorded solution the horse passes in front of the palace, withdraws, returns, and finally settles on 17. H5+4 directly in the general's file, where it serves as the screen for the cannon's check; Black has no reply.

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Modern editors accept the section's value for teaching while correcting much of its detail. Liu Jianqing and Liu Jian, whose annotated edition prints the endgames with revised solutions, note that the conclusions of the original reflect the limits of its time, and Jia Titao's preface to the same edition treats the book as required reading whose errors should be corrected rather than repeated.

Textual history

The first printing is dated to 1632. Its title page is described with the three large characters 桔中秘, the five characters 金鵬十八變 ("The Golden Roc's Eighteen Transformations") above them, and 江左書林藏板 below; the nephew-collators Zhu Erye (朱爾鄴) and Zhu Jingxiao (朱景蕭) are named on the page, and the preface, editorial rules, complete instructions, endgame preface and verses follow. The heading Golden Roc's Eighteen Transformations links the book to an older opening tradition, and it was kept in later reprints: it stands above the title in the 1936 Shanghai printing and on the cover of the Republican lithograph.

A manuscript copy of the manual, with a cursive preface and a table of contents in four volumes, survives in the Palace Museum and was reproduced in the Palace Museum Rare Books Series together with two Go manuals, the Manual of Endings (官子譜) and The Juyi Hall Go Manual (居易堂圍棋譜). Qing printings include the Weigen Studio (味根齋) edition of 1853 and the blocks of Jiangzuo Shulin (江左書林), Huiwentang (會文堂) and Jinshangshuye Hall (金閶書業堂). The printings differ in the way the endgames are counted — some carry 137 diagrams and others 131, with three positions added as notes, so that copies are described variously as containing 137, 140 or 134 positions.

Republican-era and modern editions followed: a lithograph from the Chess Study Society (棋學研究社), the 1936 typeset edition of the Shanghai Chinese Literature Book Company with Zhou Bowen's collation, and annotated editions by Liu Jianqing and Liu Jian, and by Li Geng and Yang Dian, whose notes are reproduced in the digital collections.

Reception

Later Chinese writers treat the manual as one of the foundations of the game's literature. Jia Titao, prefacing the annotated edition, calls it "a book that every student of xiangqi must read", while warning that it has many faults when measured by modern standards and that its errors need to be corrected rather than copied. Liu Jianqing writes that its authority with learners is of long standing, because it had brought the openings into a system and because its attacks are compelling to play through. The manual's own editorial rules anticipate the criticism: one of them admits that the replies in the complete games "cannot be called anything but poor", and says they are used deliberately to bring out the strength of the first player. The collection's version note adds that the book was the most frequently reprinted xiangqi manual of the Ming and Qing periods.

See also

• Same-direction cannons
• Opposite-direction cannons
• Screen horses
• Plum Blossom Manual
• Elegant Pastime
• Golden Roc's Eighteen Transformations