A Student’s Skill at Go Impressed His Professor Enough to Move a Family to America
After moving to teach in America, the professor offered to help with the visa and college applications at a time when people did not generally understand that coming was an option.
David Senra · Building The World's First AI Software Engineer | Cognition’s Scott WuOn weekends in China, a graduate student sat across a board from his professor to play Go, the strategy game played with black and white stones where players surround territory. The student usually won. The two talked through the games afterward, and the professor liked him largely for that.
The student was the father of Scott Wu, co-founder of the software startup Cognition. Wu says his parents came to the United States “in some sense because of Go,” which he called a funny coincidence.
His father was a strong player while in graduate school in China, a seven dan. Wu compared the rank to a chess rating of about 2,300 to 2,400.
After those weekend games, the professor moved to the United States to teach. Wu said this came at a very early point in immigration from China to the United States, when people did not generally understand that coming was an option.
The professor contacted Wu’s father to tell him he had come, that it was great and much better, and that he should come too. In Wu’s account, the professor said there was so much more opportunity here and offered to help with the visa application and with applying to colleges.
His father applied to graduate school in the United States, and that is how the family ended up coming in the first place. Wu was born after the move.
Questions people ask
What does it mean to be seven dan at Go?
Dan ranks mark advanced amateur players, with seven dan near the top. It means years of study and tournament strength, roughly comparable, as Wu suggested, to an expert level chess player who can beat nearly all casual players.
Was it really that hard to immigrate from China to the U.S. then?
Yes. Large scale immigration from mainland China only reopened after U.S. reforms in 1965 and China’s opening in the late 1970s and 1980s. In the early years, student visas tied to university admission were one of the few workable routes, and they often depended on a professor’s sponsorship.
Is Go still a way for students to build connections?
Yes, though chess plays that role more often in the West. Go remains popular in China, Korea, and Japan, and strong play can earn respect from teachers and mentors. University clubs and tournaments still bring students and professors together outside class.