Grandpa's chessboard: he let me win for thirty years, then showed his hand

I learned chess at five. My teacher was my grandfather.

I won the first game. I opened with the central cannon and tore his defense apart in a few moves, and his old general had nowhere left to go. I ran around the yard holding the piece over my head, shouting that I'd won, I'd won. Grandpa sat in the rattan chair stroking his beard and laughing. "Good, good. My grandson is a chess genius."

Over the next thirty years I beat him several hundred more times.

Grandpa was a famous player. The whole village agreed on it. In his youth he had placed in the county tournament, and after he retired he held court at the chess tables by the village entrance, where players from other villages came to challenge him and rarely went home with a win. The strange thing was that this man, playing his grandson, from the boy's fifth year to his thirtieth, almost never won.

In middle school I beat him. In high school I beat him. In college, home on break, I beat him. Then I was working, married, with a child, bringing the child home to see him — and I still beat him. Every time he lost with total conviction. "The student surpasses the master." I was quietly proud of myself. Grandpa's old, I thought. His mind has slowed.

The turn came last year. Grandpa was eighty-nine and still sturdy. At National Day I brought my son back to the village, and after dinner we set up the board as usual. My son, in middle school, played him the first game. Grandpa won, cleanly, checkmate in a little over twenty moves. My son wouldn't accept it and played two more. He lost both.

Watching from the side, I began to feel that something was wrong. The careless scattering of moves Grandpa showed when he played me was gone. The man in front of me calculated clearly and laid traps with practice. This was plainly the player who had placed in the county tournament.

That night the two of us sat alone in the yard. I said, "Grandpa. When you play me — have you ever been serious?"

He was quiet in the rattan chair for a while. Then he showed his hand. "The year you were five, you couldn't last ten moves in a game. If I'd won, would you have come back for a second one?" He said he had worked out the rhythm of the handicap in advance. "At five I gave you rook, horse and cannon. At ten, horse and cannon. In middle school, only a cannon. In college we played even — and even then you wanted to beat me, so I'd give you half a piece. The more you beat me, the more often you came back."

He said, "If I beat you every single time, would you still sit down across from me?"

I sat in that yard until the small hours. Thirty years. Hundreds of games. The chess talent I had been so proud of had been fed to me one piece at a time. Every game he lost was a rope he used to pull me back to his side.

There is a kind of love that loses to you on purpose, so that you can win the confidence to go out into the world. And when you are older, and you come back, it shows you what it can really do, and says: I was here the whole time.

This National Day I took my son back to the village again. At the table my son played me and beat me. I glanced at Grandpa, and Grandpa gave me a look, and the two of us understood each other without a word. After dinner he settled into the rattan chair and beckoned me over. "Come. Today I'm not giving you any pieces. You and me. A real game."

That game lasted two hours. I lost. I lost with total conviction, and I was perfectly happy.