Jon Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle, 07/15/08
When I was in my 20s, I was given a Chinese puzzle box. It was a lovely object, smooth and elegant and wonderful to touch. It was also an elegant puzzle. The instructions: “Open the box.” Three words. The solution involved thinking (including some sideways thinking) and fooling around. I gather that’s what all science is about – sideways thinking and fooling around.
The idea, I guess, was that one could keep one’s valuables in the box because a thief would find it impossible to open. (A thief could just steal the whole box and break it open with a hammer, but that would disturb the serenity of the universe.) I didn’t keep my valuables there because I could never quite remember how to open the box. Spatial relationships are not my thing.
At about the same time, I saw another puzzle. It consisted of shapes – two large triangles, one medium triangle, two small triangles, one square and one parallelogram – arranged to form a large square. The person who showed me the puzzle mixed the pieces up and challenged me to re-form the square. My thinking was, apparently, not quite sideways enough. Then she showed me how to do it. Easy!
Turns out those pieces are called tangrams, or “seven ingenious pieces,” and 200 years ago they were all the rage in China. Many shapes could be created from the pieces – animals, human figures, landscapes. The pieces were made out of metal, wood or ivory; there were serving bowls made in those shapes, and furniture. They were infinitely mutable. They had philosophical resonance, too; they were objects of contemplation.
In 1862, a scholar named Tong Xiegeng created a more elaborate version of the tangrams called “enhancing intelligent pieces.” There are 15 of them, and they too could be arranged to form a square; they could also be arranged to illustrate the poetry of Li Po. They have philosophical and mathematical implications that I haven’t yet begun to understand. As aesthetic objects, though, they are remarkable.
Came troubles in China, which started with the invasion by the Japanese in 1931 and extended right through the Cultural Revolution. Many parts of the culture were lost or ignored or buried, and puzzles were considered needlessly frivolous and useless. Even the greatest Chinese puzzle of them all, usually called “the nine linked rings” (instructions: “Unlink the rings”), fell into disfavor and obscurity.
But people noticed; people cared. Wei Zhang and Peter Rasmussen of Berkeley began traveling in China in the mid-’90s, looking for puzzles and for the people who made them. The world of Chinese puzzles was not dead, just scattered. (A lot of their best objects they found at auctions in the United States.) What started as a casual pastime, a reason to jaunt around China, became an obsession. No one knows whether they have the largest collection of Chinese puzzles outside China, but it’s sure possible.
A generous sampling from their collection will be on display at the Chinese Cultural Center from next Tuesday through Oct. 11. The Chinese Cultural Center is on the third floor of the Hilton Hotel, across the street from Portsmouth Square on Kearny Street. It is an undervisited institution; you might want to make a special trip. In addition to the vintage puzzles, there are tables with modern copies of the puzzles. Take a few minutes and experiment. The nine linked rings take 341 moves to disassemble, but don’t worry, there’s a pattern.
Oh, and did I say the exhibition is free? It’s free.
In the mid-’90s, a friend of Wei Zhang and Peter Rasmussen found a copy of a book called “Ingenious Rings” in the Library of Congress, about a master craftsman named Ruan Liuqi who created and sold ingenious variations of the nine-ring puzzles. They traveled to Wuxi in Jiangsu province to find his descendants. They found four sons and a daughter, all middle-aged or older. They had not made puzzles for a long time; the family craft was almost lost.
With the couple’s encouragement, Ruan Liuqi’s son Ruan Genquan began making the puzzles again. He got other members of his family involved. The international community of puzzle enthusiasts (of whom Ruan Genquan had been unaware) began to take notice. Soon the family business was thriving again. Once again, there are people with leisure time in China; once again, the puzzles are gaining popularity.
Sitting in their Berkeley kitchen, I tried my hand at a few of Wei Zhang and Peter Rasmussen’s puzzles. Time has not increased my skills; I was still terrible. But I found a deep sensual enjoyment in merely manipulating the pieces. When Rasmussen showed me how they worked, it was almost like being told a joke, or hearing a new piece of music. More than that, I cannot say. Go see for yourself.
Oh, this should be easy – these two triangles form a square and this other square goes right here, and – oh dear, there’s a pointy bit. There shouldn’t be a pointy bit.
Faded jaded falling cowboy star, pawnshops itching for your old guitar. Where you’re going, God only knows, the sequins have fallen from your clothes. Once you heard the Opry crowd applaud, now you’re hanging out at Fourth and Broad on the rain-wet sidewalk remembering the time when coffee with a friend was still jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.
