Piece keepers

You could grab a coffee and a sandwich in the time it took this gent to make his move in the ancient game of xiangqi (pronounced shee-auhng-chee) in a small park off Flower Market path. Still, that didn't deter eight old guys from crowding around the table, looking like Andy Griffith the day before the start of trout season.

This guy is more deliberative than Jeff Flake. It's like waiting for a baby.

Also known as the Elephant Game, it has similarities to chess, but xiangqi is probably played by more people in the world than the Western board game. Instead of bishops, knights, queens and kings, the pieces represent horses, chariots, elephants and cannons. The equivalent of "pawns" are known as "foot soldiers." The pieces don't sit inside the squares, but on top of the intersecting lines. The idea is to capture the other guy's "governor," but some pieces aren't allowed to leave their "fortress" or to cross the thick "river" in the middle of the board. Many thanks to my landlord (another Andy) for explaining this to me.

The park is in the shadows of Mong Kok Stadium and just a few steps away from Boundary Street, which marked the northern limit of the former British territory of Hong Kong.

Boundary Street. Everything south of the boundary (to the left) was ceded to Britain under the 1860 Convention of Peking.