Because of concern that non-Chinese find it difficult to read the Chinese characters which differentiate the uniformly shaped flat pieces, the promoters attempted to switch to upright pieces, but this proved futile, and they have since gone back to the flat pieces.
對照今天，東南亞一些嘗試推展象棋活動的國家，擔心人們不懂漢字，代之以立體象棋，卻常無功而返。