The creative idea was to use the existing online game and bring it into the real world in key public spaces that would engage and resonate with people. By bring the ancient game up to date through creating a real time game we were then able to involve the elderly as if they were playing the game in the traditional fashion. The creative use of the technology allowed us to link up the elderly to their rivals in other cities.

Two famous parks where older people tend to gather regularly in Beijing and Shanghai (Beijing Xiayuan Park & Shanghai Huaihai Park) were selected to set up an eye-catching, colourful interactive XiangQi Chinese Chess game unit designed and built by Tencent Games. The interactive units, carefully and respectfully designed to merge the digital world with that of the XiangQi tradition, had a camera and screen to connect Beijing and Shanghai players together. This allowed the interested elderly, and younger, participants in the other city to greet each other and play the Chinese Chess game against each other in real-time. This interaction gave the elderly the opportunity to liberate their young souls in a competitive and innovative way and thus defend their ‘gaming’ honour, their ‘park ‘, and their city in the ageless rivalry between the Shanghainese vs. the Beijingers.

During the 3 day event, the old and young people alike, played the game and enjoyed meeting and greeting new friends/adversaries in another city, demonstrating that they still had their own youthful spirit intact.

An exceptionally warm response was garnered in each city to the on-site activities, with many elderly players and onlookers of all ages attracted to participate.

1. 21,000+ people participated watched the game in the parks

2. The uploaded video boasted 20,000+ hits on the first day, with a total of 530,100 views in 60 days

3. The video on social media (Weibo, Weixin) attracted 15,952,813 page-views in 20 days

4. 27,587,700 young and old now play Tencent XiangQi online