One night, I ran into several 1st year students in the lobby, who were playing card games. Since I like to corner students, I said hello and simply sat in the room while they finished their game. Finally, either through the awkwardness of me simply sitting in the room or their gathering up the courage, they introduced themselves to me. They invited me to play UNO Attack, which I have never played. It is fairly similar to UNO, but just different enough to be really confusing with a language barrier. There is a dispenser you press, which may give you no cards or several, sputtering them out like projectiles. Each burst had the students jumping, oooing, awing, and laughing when a player received a pile of cards.
Quickly, we progressed to new (to me) Chinese card games. The first, basically translated as ‘Pull on the Thick Blanket.’ Players have piles of cards, a la War, and the first player starts by throwing out a a card and saying “Ace,” the next throws a card and says, “Two,” and so on until Jack, Queen, and King. Simple enough, until the card thrown is the card that was said (for example, the 2 of clubs lands when a player says, “Two.”). Then, every player must thrust his hand onto the pile of cards. The last hand in has to pick up all the cards. After you run out of cards, you have to successfully NOT be the last hand in TWO more times in order to win. Of course, hands are slapped in hard, which is why soon – yours truly will likely be known as Apple Red Hands.
The second card game we played translates basically into “Level Seven Pig.” I know…my first thought was, “Goodie,” especially when they said the loser would be “punished.” The object of the game is to collect a four of a kind and put your hand on your nose the quickest. If a player rushed towards his nose, get your hand their quicker than everyone else. The last player to do this is assigned ‘Level 1.’ If any player speaks to that player, they become ‘Level 1.’ The card game starts over, and again, get the four, get your hand on your nose. If you fail again, you are a ‘Level 2.’ You can see how the game works. Repeatedly, you try to get the four, touch your nose, and avoid talking to the people in the upper levels (for fear that you will join them – and be closer still to the dreaded ‘Level 7 Pig’). The people in the upper levels try to get you to talk to them, so that everyone is in higher levels. Finally, someone becomes Level 7 and the game is over. But the fun is just beginning.
One of the students finally reached Level 7 (I played masterfully and managed to stay at Level 3), and they all turned to me for a fun punishment. I suggested that she sing ‘I’m a little teapot,‘ which was greeted by laughter. She confessed that she didn’t know the English words, but that she could sing it in Cantonese with the motions. So, the punishment for our game was that the student had to sing and dance for the other players.
Finally, we played possibly the silliest game ever. A person sits in a chair, with their eyes closed, while the others run in a circle around them. The chair points and whoever is closest has to say a phrase. I never could quite figure out what we were suppose to say, but it was close to “I am a bear.” The person picked attempts to disguise their voice, and the chair person tries to guess their name. If the chair is correct, the picked person goes to the chair. Either way, everyone then runs like mad in the circle, repeating and repeating and repeating. The benefit of this game is that I now know ALL of those students’ names (even their Chinese names). I also got to practice my Cantonese, which is still atrocious. All of the students were good natured, though, smiling and acted impressed by my atonal sounds. And, after a few hands of cards, the students seemed more comfortable speaking English in front of me. Good times…
