Monday, June 9, 2008

"Bayjingle Bells" and Mahjong With the Boys

Well, I finally learned how to play mahjong, which I will henceforth call majiang, because that's how you really spell it and say it. And while we're at it, you know that sound you make that's the S in "usual, asia, pleasure" or the J in how you usually say "Beijing, mahjong" in English? Well, I don't know why you all say it that way for Beijing and majiang. The Chinese pronunciation is a J, like in "jingle bells", just like it looks. Probably some French person started saying it that other way and it stuck. So really Beijing is [bay jing] with a J as in Jingle Bells. Remember that. Bayjingle bells.
And majiang has that same J.




So a new friend Alex (who makes rc flying things) and an older friend John (who's also from NJ) and my neighbor friend Wang Hao James Bond (with whom I mutually found a ten kuai note on the ground so in order to solve the problem of who should keep it we bought 10kuai's worth of apples and split them) all came over tonight for the Dragon Boat Festival and they taught me to play majiang. Actually we did nothing Dragon Boat related at all, except made one weak attempt at buying zong4zi, a glutinous rice food wrapped in leaves with any of several fillings inside. But the market near me was all out. So we bought cookies and cherries and soda and iced tea and water. And I already had almonds and cashews waiting. We all barely ate anything so I sent them home with some.

How to Play Majiang
It's like playing poker with dominoes. You mix them all up, then arrange them in certain rows. Then you roll dice to see where you start picking the tiles from. You take 13 tiles. On each turn you draw (from the row or the one the last guy threw away) and discard one. You have to make sets of sequences or same tiles, like poker. Not hard to learn really, but it wasn't an all-chinese-speaking night after all. Too difficult to do while learning a new game. Too many new words. But now that I know the words for all the tiles, and some words like draw and discard and "wake up idiot, it's your turn" and "Check" (I only need one more to win, so watch out, suckers), etc... I think maybe I can handle it in Chinese next time.

It was fun. Not the usual stereotypical smoky drinking-gambling-all-night version of the game, just a calm, mild, learning evening. John spilled soda everywhere. I just thought I'd mention that in case he ever reads it. It's ok John, mei shi, bu shi wode sheet, shi fangdongde. Check out my washing machine 2 posts ago, no problem!

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