Chinese checkers finishers. The rules are simple, so even young children can play. Despite its name, the game is not a variation of checkers, nor did it originate in China or any part of Asia (whereas the game 象棋 "xiangqi", or "Chinese chess", is from China). The game was invented in Germany in 1892 under the name "Stern-Halma" as a variation of the older American game Halma. The "Stern" (German for "star") refers to the board's star shape (in contrast to the square board used in Halma). The name "Chinese Checkers" originated in the United States as a marketing scheme by Bill
Chinese people in the Czech Republic they were in the past; in 1993, only 7% of Chinese in the country lived elsewhere, but by 2000 that figure had grown to 41%. However, they remain more urbanised than any other immigrant group in the country. They come largely from Zhejiang, Beijing, and Shanghai, and men outnumber women by a ratio of three-to-two, according to unofficial surveys. In the late 1990s, there may have been as many as 9,000 Chinese in the country, including illegal migrants. However, December 2007 official figures from the Czech Statistical Office showed a total of just 4,986; this made Chinese the 10th-largest group