Chinese rings is a puzzle that has attracted the attention of laity and mathematicians. Today we recognize the puzzle by the name Chinese rings; however, it is not confirmed that it really comes from China. Although mathematicians had already in the 16th century started with the discussion about Chinese rings and developed effective solving algorithms, the mathematical model and theory emerged only in the 19th century with Gros.
In this work we present the optimal way of solving classic Chinese rings as well as accelerated Chinese rings.
The state graph of the Chinese rings is isomorphic to the path graph, what gives to the state graph some interesting properties.
Among the most important characteristics is the connection between a state of the graph and its distance from the initial vertex. We use Gros's automaton to get a distance
from the state of the graph and in the opposite direction we use Gray's automaton.
We analyse some sequences coming from the Chinese rings.
The Lichtenberg sequence is a sequence of necessary moves to solve the problem of Chinese rings with $n$ rings, and the Gros sequence is the sequence of optimal moves when moving rings on the bar. A version of Chinese rings which is named Elephant Spin Out Puzzle is also introduced and analysed in this work.
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