Xiangqi Red Cannon

It is Red's long-range attacker that captures by jumping. Xiangqi is China's own chess game, played on the points of a 9×10 grid split by a river, Red against Black, Red moving first. Each side has two cannons, which start two rows in front of their horses.

When it is not capturing, the cannon moves any distance along a row or column, like a rook in Western chess, and may not jump. To capture, it needs exactly one piece between itself and its target, of either colour, and leaps over it. Players call that piece the screen or the cannon mount (炮架). A cannon standing right next to an enemy piece cannot take it.

Cannons are strongest early, when the board is crowded with screens. The best-known opening, the central cannon (当头炮), swings one cannon to the middle file to aim straight at the enemy general.

Why does it look like a character, a picture or a box?

Your font decides, and most fonts don't include it. Unicode leaves the design to fonts: a round piece with 炮, or a little cannon picture. Many phones and computers have no font for it and show a blank box. Online xiangqi games draw their own pieces, and in chat players simply write 炮, or C in English notation.

Red's cannon is written 炮, with the fire radical; Black's is 砲, with the stone radical. Both read pào. The stone form recalls the piece's older meaning: a stone-throwing catapult.