Zhang Ru'an, a mainland Chinese scholar of chess history, asks: "Why did the Northern Song make so many changes to Tang dynasty chess, causing Chinese chess to become so different from Western chess?"
「為什麼北宋人要對唐代象戲大力革新，形成了中國象棋迥異於西洋棋的體制？」大陸棋史研究者張如安提出這一有趣的問題。