Following new "off-sourced" pros

[Ferran]

While Sumire and Risa are steaming ahead in the 1-dan section, the foreigners are having a tough time. Antii is on 0-7, Indonesian-born Rafif Shidqi Fitrah is on 0-2 and Chang Fukang of Malaysia is on 1-2. Given her pedigree back to Kitani Minoru, we might also have hoped for a brighter start by Cho Kosumi, but she's on 0-3.

This was posted in Nakamura shodan's thread, and I was wondering... Do we have any further information about them? Regarding both SE players I only have that and an Ashashi Simbun's piece from 2019. But I don't have anything new on Cho Kosumi nor on Francis Meyer.

Also, did this year bring us any new pro outside the usual suspects? [I was going to say outside East Asia, but that no longer fits the thrust of my meaning]

Take care.

[Ferran]

Okay, we seem to be lucky. Japan sent Zeng/Chang Fukang [*] to the Globis CUP in 2018. He lost both of his games, but he was facing Xie Ke and Fujisawa Rina.

Take care.

[*] I think these are alternative versions of the same name. Not sure. Date of birth and picture seem to match.

[Ferran]

Apparently, Chang Fukang reached 2p sometime last year. Rafif Shidqi Fitrah is still shodan, though.

I tried to check Tormannen, while I was at it, and his profile seems to be empty. Does anyone know why?

Take care

[kvasir]

[*] I think these are alternative versions of the same name. Not sure. Date of birth and picture seem to match.

Maybe Chang Fukang is a pinyin-like rendering of his non-Mandarin name or it is simply a less standard Mandarin? Zeng Fukang would appear to be the pinyin for the Mandarin name. Very often when someone has a name in Chinese characters the pronunciation is still expected to follow their own language. Zeng is one of the usual surnames in Chinese (wikipedia says it is 38th most common in China). It seems reasonable that lot of people familiar with Chinese would simply assume it was Zeng, leading to the name becoming Zeng when converted to the Latin alphabet.

Japanese often uses phonetic alphabets to render such names but sometimes characters are desired. The assumed pronunciation of the characters then sometimes becomes accepted. Japanese pronunciations of Chinese names always seems to create something really unique. Maybe this is why those names stick but the trend appears to be to preserve peoples original names.

I tried to check Tormannen, while I was at it, and his profile seems to be empty. Does anyone know why?

It is probably a technical problem. Every now and then the stats and recent games won't load when I open a player's profile on the Nihon Kiin webpage.

[Shaddy]

I met Fukang in Beijing when he was studying there. At that time everyone called him Zheng Fukang, to add some confusion..

[kvasir]

This is a mystery. I anticipate monsieur Poirot will be involved.

[Vesa]

I tried to check Tormannen, while I was at it, and his profile seems to be empty. Does anyone know why?

Better try https version of the URL アンティトルマネン.

Cheers,
Vesa