Chinese love figuring with abacuses. Anyone in business works clickety-clack on their abacus, watching the money roll in; politicians do silent and careful calculations on their "inner abacuses," figuring out how to get to the top of the heap; misbehaving husbands nabbed by their wives may well be forced to "kneel on an abacus."

The heyday of the abacus passed with the advent of electronic calculators in the 1970s. The abacus still lives on, though, in the hearts and speech of the Chinese, immune to the encroachment of the electronic age. You're not likely to hear the expression, "Let me punch this one in" when someone's contemplating their next move, nor is it common practice to order miscreants home to "kneel on a computer keyboard."

There's a lot more to abacuses then summing and subtracting.

In the Yuan dynasty, the elderly ascetic Pang is remembered for his boast," To figure my age, you will need an abacus." The best-selling Ming dynasty abacus manual, the Compendium of Mathematics, holds formulae for reckoning the sex of one's unborn children. Forthright fortune tellers use abacuses to divine disasters to come.

Even the gods figure on abacuses. In the temple of the venerable City God, the grand overseer of man's vices and virtues, hangs a large abacus. Feel the glare of fierce gods and see their great array of torture devices--entering the temple of the City Gods leaves even the stoutest heart chilled and fearful. The gods need not file their records by government ID number, not when they can keep track of your every last deed and misdeed on their dread abacuses, and with an accuracy beyond the ken of any computer.

Figuring with abacus beads was not an invention solely Chinese. The ancient Romans and Arabs both had abacuses of simple form and function, but these were quickly replaced by written figuring. But it is the Chinese who brought the abacus to its highest degree of development.

"Alas, we have lost the name of the genius who created the abacus," said the Ching dynasty calendarist Mei Wen-ting, in a phrase that sums up well our knowledge of the abacus' origins. Neither the source or the time of invention of the abacus are known to us today. The phrase "calculating on an abacus" appeared about 1000 years ago in Hsu Yue's work, Notes on Mathematics, in the Han dynasty, which tells us that an instrument for mathematical calculation similar to the abacus existed at that time. The Sung dynasty catalogue of books listed the Pan Chu Anthology and the Tsou Pan Anthology, both works related to the abacus. Both have been lost over the millennia, making it difficult to determine whether or not the abacus was in vogue at that time.

The abacus did not truly enter the lives of the people until the juncture of the Yuan and Ming dynasties. At that time, Tao Tsung-yi in his "Record at the Close of Plowing" drew a vivid metaphor using the abacus: "On hiring servants: they are like marbles in a mortar when first they arrive -- they move without command; before too long, they become beads on an abacus, moving only when bidden; after that, they are jewels on the Bhudda's forehead, immobile as the day is long, and never moving, even when touched."

Prior to the invention of the abacus, calculations were performed with thin wooden slats, marked one through five, laid vertically or crosswise on a table. The principles used were almost the same as for the abacus, but the process of calculation was rather time consuming. For example, the amount "4" can be noted on an abacus in one motion. Using the older method, four slats had to be moved one by one, which meant that complex calculations tended to get a little frantic. By the Ming dynasty, a time of great commercial activity, these slats were totally supplanted by the abacus.

The most celebrated Ming dynasty master of the abacus was Cheng Ta-wei. As a young man, Cheng Ta-wei traveled extensively throughout populous and wealthy southern China in his visits with renowned mathematicians. At the age of 60 he completed the Compendium of Mathematics, the best-selling book in history on the abacus.

The Compendium lists in detail various formulae and techniques for calculations involving everything from pepper, rice and grain, rents, percentage composition of gold and silver, and even the birth of male and female children. Each technique comes with a little tune to be sung while practicing one's abacus skills. Cheng's work enjoyed immediate success. As was said at the time, "Everyone who owned an abacus in the South owned a copy." Merchants committed themselves to learning the Compendium just as scholars delved into the Four Books and the Five Classics.

Before long, a dozen or so pirated versions of the Compendium began turning up in book shops, angering Cheng Ta-wei into opening a publishing house to produce Compendiums specially marked as being genuine items. Aside from popularizing the abacus, the Compendium is also credited with bringing the abacus to Japan, where it was translated and adapted into Japanese to become an indispensable text for training in abacus usage.

The "standard abacus" used today, with 35 columns of five rhomboid beads, one above and four below, is in fact an improved model invented by the Japanese called the "chao ho" abacus. There was also an earlier model, which had one bead above and five below, known as the "ta cheng" abacus. China's own abacus, the one described in the Lu Pan Mu Classic as having "two peas above and five below," and which we still see used by proprietors and accountants in some older shops and in traditional dramas, has two upper and five lower flat, round beads in each column.

The Chinese began using the decimal system very early on. As noted by Hung Wan-sheng of National Taiwan Normal University, "The two up, five down arrangement of the abacus might be related to the hexadecimal notation popularly used to figure catties and taels." The Ching dynasty produced an abacus with three beads above and five below, but it never entered the mainstream.

"A good abacus is stable, makes a clear sound, has a good heft, and has sharp edges," says Cheng Yung-hsiang, vice general manager of Strong Stationery Co., the most established and highest volume manufacturer of abacuses in Taiwan. He explains that good abacuses lay flat and solid on the tabletop. They have heavy beads that click loudly when in use, indicating the quality of the materials, while also living up to the belief that the click-clack of an abacus draws money in through the door. "Sharp edges" refers to the edges of the lozenge shaped beads, which must be thin and responsive.

Beyond the standard, practical model, abacuses come in a huge variety of materials and styles. Jiang Hao-shun, who began teaching the abacus at age 16, has in the 26 years since then collected over 400 different abacuses. Materials used include gold, silver, jade, porcelain, marble, and paper. He has abacuses for children, the blind, face-to-face models for bargaining, and special variants made specially for multiplication and division. Shapes of his abacuses range from the fan-shaped, circular and square, all the way to ones that can be rolled up or folded in half. The longest is over a meter in length, and the shortest only a centimeter. He has abacus necklaces, rings, cuff links, bracelets . . . everything you could imagine.

Most of his abacuses are just for fun. "For practical use, the wooden-beaded abacus is the best. Neither gold nor jade work well--the first hurts the eyes, and the other is too brittle," says Jiang. Shattering a bead or otherwise breaking the abacus through use brings with it the heartbreak of "never getting accounts cleared up."

The best abacuses for everyday use have frames made from black sandalwood. More popular models use frames of compressed sawdust composite. The beads are fashioned from cherry wood imported from Japan. Because of difficulty obtaining black sandalwood, the great majority of abacuses now sold have frames of compressed wood. The going price is around NT$400.

The widespread popularity of pocket calculators ushered in a computer revolution, and posed the question of whether or not the abacus could survive. Competitions between the abacus and the calculator became common events.

A competition between a Japanese store clerk's abacus and an American military computer was held in 1946. The winner by a hair, for speed and accuracy, was the abacus, a conclusion that left the Americans wide-eyed and speechless.

Mastery of the abacus is graded into six levels. After reaching the top, Level 1, there are ten more "Expert" rankings. Rising to the rank of 10 is an achievement of near god-like proportion.

The low age-group champion of the ROC National Primary School Abacus Competition, Taipei Municipal Hulu Primary School third-grader Wu Pin-chun, began his study of the abacus in kindergarten. He now holds a ranking of 10 for mental calculation, and 5 for the abacus. Sixtyseven seconds is all he needs to click-clack through twenty calculations of three-digit figures. The answers to division problems are generally smaller, which helps explain his blazing average speed of 1.75 seconds per problem for twenty divisions of five-digit by three-digit numbers. His fingers fly over the beads with a speed and accuracy nearly seemingly beyond human capacity.

Jiang Hao-shun thinks little of these speed competitions. "It's fine as a game, but the goal of learning the abacus is not to outrace computers. The nature and purpose of the two devices are different, and each has its place."

For arithmetic calculations with numbers of eight digits and below, a trained hand at the abacus can defeat a calculator. "Entering the number 10,000 takes only one stroke on the abacus, but five on a calculator," notes Wu Wen-hsiung, international judge at abacus competitions. Thus companies handling high-volume calculation still keep plenty of abacuses on hand. According to a survey performed on students graduating from National Taipei College of Business, sixty percent of those who studied accounting think that skill on the abacus is still important, while a good eighty-six percent of those in finance felt similarly.

However, except for those who have spent long years of hard study on the abacus, figuring radicals and percentages is much easier on a computer. Computers can also store data, produce print-outs and even run programs for automated calculation of fixed formulas.

The goal of studying the abacus, then, is not to defeat computers, but to sharpen the mind and learn mathematical concepts. "The purpose of jogging is to condition the body," says Wu Wen-hsiung, "not to race with cars and planes." This is why material for teaching the abacus to primary school children expressly forbids students from using calculators.

So it would seem that abacuses will hold their place in modern society despite the huge popularity of computers.

Taiwan's largest and oldest abacus manufacturer, Strong Stationery Co., has sold an average of 200,000 abacuses per year since 1961. Sales figures have held steady throughout, the only change being a rising demand for quality following Taiwan's economic development. Current demand for Japanese imports have already surpassed the number of abacuses assembled in Taiwan.

Another figure is even more startling. Participants in the twice-yearly "National Abacus Verification," held alternately by the ROC Abacus Society, the General Commerce Association, and the ROC Chapter of the International Abacus Federation, number over 250,000, which adds up to over a half million participants a year.

Wu Wen-hsiung, who frequently brings school children to the verifications, has found that the percentage of child participants is rising. The reason is that mastery of the abacus requires quick hands, sharp eyes, mental acuity and keen hearing, important skills which have prompted many parents to add the abacus to the list of their children's extracurricular activities. Wu Ping-chun's mother points out that her son is always ready to recite ID card numbers or telephone numbers that she herself has forgotten. Her son's next area of endeavor is to be the piano, another skill requiring agile fingers and a good memory.

The abacus has existed in China for over 1000 years, and yet the abacus we hold up as being standard is of Japanese invention, more and more of our abacuses are Japanese imports, and the verification system we use is from Japan. Also, many people obtain their certification from Japan.

There are estimated to be over 30,000 private schools teaching the abacus in Japan, a small town in Hyougo County devoted to the manufacture of abacuses has a nationally-recognized master abacus craftsman, and a 1600-page dictionary of the abacus can be bought in bookstores. Wherever Japanese immigrate, be it North America, Brazil or Hawaii, they set up their own private abacus training schools.

Just like flower arranging and the tea ceremony, the Chinese "trademark" of the abacus is now decorated with a cherry blossom.

[Picture Caption]

The abacus meets the computer--tradition confronts the modern world.

(Above)The incredible popularity of the abacus reveals itself in the abacus and mental calculation verification meetings of the Abacus Society and other groups, and in similar activities at privately-run schools. (photo courtesy of Tseng Chun-chao)

(Below left) Written during the reign of the Ming dynasty Wan Li emperor (1593 A.D.), Cheng Ta-wei's Mathematical Compendium is the best-selling book in history on the abacus. The photograph shows the compendium's cover.

(Below right) A Weatern woodcut shows how calculations were performed with beads.

As mastering the abacus requires complex mental calculation, children who study the abacus usually excel at mental arithmetic. First-grader Lai Yi-ling can already perform rapid calculations of six-digit numbers.

"Multiplying and dividing, figuring rights and wrongs": The deities in the Temple of the City Gods use their great abacus to reckon the good and evil deeds performed over a person's lifetime. (photo by Arthur Cheng)

Dad, do you know anything about the abacus?

Indeed I do, I come in contact with the abacus nearly every day.

Is that with your hands, or with your knees?

(Artist: Chu Te-yung)

From top to bottom: A children's specially designed abacus for performing multiplication and division; an abacus from the Soviet Union; two traditional Chinese abacuses; an abacus pendant.

The "Mad Abacuser" Chiang Hao-shun, who began teaching the abacus at the age of 16, has collected over 400 different types of abacuses. (photo by Hu Fu-tsai)

（Above）The incredible popularity of the abacus reveals itself in the abacus and mental calculation verification meetings of the Abacus Society and other groups, and in similar activities at privately-run schools. （photo courtesy of Tseng Chun-chao）

（Below left） Written during the reign of the Ming dynasty Wan Li emperor （1593 A.D.）, Cheng Ta-wei's Mathematical Compendium is the best-selling book in history on the abacus. The photograph shows the compendium's cover.

（Below right） A Weatern woodcut shows how calculations were performed with beads.

As mastering the abacus requires complex mental calculation, children who study the abacus usually excel at mental arithmetic. First-grader Lai Yi-ling can already perform rapid calculations of six-digit numbers.

"Multiplying and dividing, figuring rights and wrongs": The deities in the Temple of the City Gods use their great abacus to reckon the good and evil deeds performed over a person's lifetime. （photo by Arthur Cheng）

（Artist: Chu Te-yung）

From top to bottom: A children's specially designed abacus for performing multiplication and division; an abacus from the Soviet Union; two traditional Chinese abacuses; an abacus pendant.

The "Mad Abacuser" Chiang Hao-shun, who began teaching the abacus at the age of 16, has collected over 400 different types of abacuses. （photo by Hu Fu-tsai）