This might be the coolest story I’ve discussed yet. Mooncake gambling exists, and it is a thriving recreation in a Chinese city. From China Daily:
in Xiamen, a coastal city of East China’s Fujian Province, you find a pack of six dice inside after opening every gaudily-decorated box of mooncakes.
Gambling? Right, but it is definitely legal. Because the stakes among the locals are mooncakes – and that is how this unique celebrating activity has got its Chinese name “Bo Bing.” It is played only around the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese lunar calendar, and in this year it falls on Septemper 28.
For centuries, the Mid-Autumn Festival has encouraged family reunions, big feasts and enjoyment of a beautiful full moon. Seriously, I think this will appear in chapter 2, 3, or 4.
But for people in Xiamen, their exciting games have just started.
Easy to play though, the games have quite complicated rules hard to remember. So it is thoughtful for some mooncake manufacturers to print the rules on the package.
All the “Bo Bing” game requires are six dice and a china bowl. Just throw the dice into the bowl – and the different pips you get stand for different ranks of awards you will win.
When walking along streets in this tiny island during this time, you will hear the pleasant silvery sound of the dice rolling. Cheers of winning or loss are everywhere.
The 300-year-old custom of mooncake gambling dates back to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). The inventor, Zheng Chenggong (1624-62), a general of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), stationed his army in Xiamen. Zheng was determined to recover Taiwan, which was occupied by Dutch invaders since 1624.
When every Mid-Autumn Festival came, the soldiers naturally missed their families but fought with heroical determination to drive off the aggressors.
General Zheng and his lower officer Hong Xu invented mooncake gambling to help relieve homesickness among the troops.
The gambling game has six ranks of awards, which are named as the winners in ancient imperial examinations, and has 63 different sized mooncakes as prizes.
This is fascnating–people gambling on cakes to commemorate the bravery of soldiers nearly four hundred years ago. We in the United States should have hoecake gambling to remember General Washington’s troops at Valley Forge. I don’t know if they gambled on hoecakes, but I remember reading once that hoecakes were one of Washington’s favorite foods.
Anyway, there’s more to this story. Apparently, commercialization is ruining the mooncake holiday:
Meanwhile, about 82 percent of locals surveyed said that current mooncakes tend to be overpackaged and too extravagant, and 70 percent of respondents consider it necessary for the government to set rules on mooncake packages, the survey indicated.
Earlier this month, a department store in Xiamen, Fujian Province was found selling “top gift mooncakes” for 9,999 yuan, claiming that the pastry is made of shark fins and other pricey fillings.
Zhang youde, a sociologist at Shanghai University, said the changing consumption trend has already spoiled mooncakes’ original flavor.
“Purchase of mooncakes has now been commercialized to meet business needs in the modern society and has even become a form of bribery. However, its original meaning of family reunion has been greatly weakened,” Zhang said.
There are also concerns that mooncakes are simply too expensive now: Why are mooncake prices so, so high? Read the article–you can even buy mooncakes on ebay.
Apparently, mooncakes, which usually run around $3, can cost as much as $180, because they are bundled with luxury items in the packaging. Sound like software or textbook purchases to me.
Here’s a giant mooncake:
Yet there’s good news. For the mooncake purist who wants to reject the glitzy, commercialized mooncake offerings, you can always make them yourself.
Look for this in ROLL THE BONES. Seriously, this will be in there somewhere. When you get your brand new copy in April 2006, just look in the index under “mooncake,” and you’ll be able to say that you read it first on dieiscast.