Muslim people of Chinese origin (Dungans), brought the game with them to Central Asian countries such as Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

The game is popular in agricultural communities in Northwestern China, and often played on a board traced out on the ground.

The game is similar in concept to nine men's morris: The player who removes all of the opponent's stones is the winner.

Because this leads to an odd number of playing points (49) the first player has an advantage.

Still other variants disallow certain moves, for example, forming a square in the same way repeatedly (similar to the ko rule in Go).