“I love to solve problems. The chessboard is like a battlefield where I immerse myself into tackling obstacles and winning the game,” says Guo Qi (China), who holds the titles of International Master and Women Grandmaster, awarded by the International Chess Federation (FIDE). She graduated with a master’s degree from Tsinghua this year.

Over the past decade, Guo Qi has won numerous national and international chess competitions. When still in high school, she won the World Junior Girls Chess Championship. In 2016, besides contributing to the victory of the Chinese team in the Women’s Asian Nations Cup and the Women’s Chess Olympiad, she also won the gold medal for best performance on the reserve board.

During her time at Tsinghua, Guo Qi worked harder, balancing her studies with her chess career and attempting to transform her passion into a career. She wrote her graduation thesis on the influences of chess education on pupils and would like to display the charm of chess so that more and more people have fun playing the game in the future.