Category Archives: Game

Big 2, A Family Game

Nationality: Chinese, American

Primary Language: English

Other language(s): Mandarin

Age: 19 yrs

Occupation: Student

Residence: Houston, Texas

Performance Date: 2/19/2024

Text:

“So, when I was like 3, at family events or gatherings, my family would get together and play this Chinese game called Big 2. My parents introduced me to it and would teach me the rules every year until I got it once I got older, and now we have been and still play it at every gathering, me and the whole family. I like the game, I mean, it’s no poker, but it’s a nice way of getting everyone together you know?”

Context:

My informant, JT, is a friend of mine from my freshman year at USC from Houston, Texas. I talked with JT one night in second semester freshman year up until 5am about our families and our relationships with them. Within this discussion we mentioned our family traditions and he explained one of his after I explained one of mine. At a later time, I asked him about it once more. 

Analysis:

After some slight research on this game, Big 2, I ended up finding out that this may not be a common family tradition within all Chinese families, but it was one which resonated with JT’s Chinese family. The game, 大老二 (Dai Di), or Big Deuce/Big Two, is a commonly played game which originated in coastal China around 1980; it became very popular in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan and also in the Philippines and Singapore, and has also spread to some western countries. The rules of the game are as follows: The objective is to get rid of all of all the cards in your hand by constantly one-upping your opponents with cards played singly or in certain poker combinations (2 cards, 3 cards, or 5 cards). The value of each card or combination comes from the numerical order of the card(s) used, as well as their suits. The cards of the smallest value are the 3s, followed by the 4s, and so on and so forth till the picture cards. Then, it’s the Aces, followed by the 2s. The suits ascend in value in the following order: diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades. Therefore, the weakest card in the game would be the 3 of diamonds, and the strongest is the 2 of spades. This is more of a gambling game, which may make sense as to why JT loves Poker so much. I think the game is fun in concept and would love to play it myself. I truly find the influence this game has in Chinese culture and family tradition to be greater than I expected. I didn’t know this game could apparently bring a family together at gatherings and teach gambling to children as well as it did with JT, because he’s actually pretty good at Poker. This game seemingly goes back into late 20th century Chinese culture and has made a dashing transition and migration of the western world.

Lemonade Crunchy Ice

Age: 20

Text:

Lemonade, Crunchy Ice, Sip it once (Up Down Clap), Sip it twice (Up Down Clap), Lemonade (Up Down Clap), Crunchy Ice (Up Down Clap), Made it once (Up Down Clap), Made it twice (Up Down Clap), Turn around (Turn Around), Touch the ground (Touch the ground), Kick your boyfriend out of town! Freeze!

Context:

My informant told me she encountered and played this game in elementary school in Irvine on the playground/blacktop. She says this could be a jumprope game or a hand game.

Analysis:

Personally, I also grew up in Southern California but in Westlake Village which is about 3 hours from Irvine and I never heard about this game as a kid. I think that this is an various of the typical songs elementary school kids sing to play jumprope but it might be more common/popular in the Irvine/Orange County area.

Cat’s cradle

Age: 19
Language: English

My informant was a Japanese-American college student at USC who grew up in California. Below is a transcript of our conversation talking about the cat’s cradle, a playground game she played as an elementary schooler.

“A cat’s cradle is a string that you can manipulate into different shapes with your hands by making a series of movements with your fingers. It was taught by my friends in elementary school and requires other people to help out to work since the patterns are easily forgettable; I had to ask people all the time how to do it. If you could make a shape out of a string people thought you were cool because you’re making a new shape out of a simple string. It felt mysterious and skillful, like a cool trick you can do to impress other kids on the playground.

I remember I also tried to teach my mom it, who said that she knew how to do it when she was younger but she forgot how to do it as she grew older. I didn’t play cat’s cradle after elementary school. There was no particular reason why; new trends just came up and I forgot how to make it.”

Cat’s cradle seems to invoke a similar sense of fascination and mystery as performing magic tricks, but this sensation seems to be quite ephemeral. It’s reminiscent of how children grow out of pretend play because they feel childish pretending like they’re something else and they want to feel more “grown-up” (this is reflected in how “too old to play pretend” is a common saying.) Because cat’s cradle was a social activity and needed other people to learn it from, the informant probably felt social pressure to stop doing something no longer regarded as “cool” anymore. The fact that the informant’s mother also knew how to do it but forgot as she grew older suggests that this is a common pattern among young children and occurs with every generation.

The Christmas Pickle

The Christmas Pickle. I learned about this Christmas tradition for the first time from one of my friends. To quote her explanation, “Every Christmas we use the same pickle ornament, usually my dad hides it in the tree, and whoever finds it on Christmas day gets to open a present first.” It’s a fun tradition that she has been doing ever since she was a little girl. She says that it didn’t start until her sister was at their neighbor’s for a Christmas party and took one of the ornaments, a pickle. It was later explained to her family by the same neighbors of the tradition and they have done it ever since. The tradition itself apparently comes from a story of a German-American prisoner who was taken prisoner during the Civil War. Starving, he begged a guard to give him one last pickle before he died. The pity pickle gave him the mental and physical strength to live on. This story is much harsher than its Christmas counterpart but nonetheless displays a sense of fortune and luck through a pickle.

“Mary’s Mother” Riddle

Text: 

Riddle: “Mary’s mother has five children. Her first four children’s names are April, May, June, and July. What is the fifth child’s name?”

Answer: “Mary”

Context:

H is currently a student at USC. She originally heard this riddle from someone at her elementary school in San Diego, California, where the students would tell it amongst each other. After sharing the riddle, H remarked that the important part of the joke seemed to be the “gotcha” twist. They also noted that the names of the four other children didn’t seem to matter as much as there being a pattern to them that might help trick the riddle’s recipient. 

Analysis: 

H already pointed out many interesting points of analysis about this riddle. Like H, I find it significant that the point of the riddle seems to be to fool the riddle recipient into forgetting the beginning of the riddle, leading them to give an incorrect answer that would seem logical to the sequence of names. I personally think that the desire to trick someone using this riddle ties in closely with the elementary setting in which H originally heard it. As has been discussed, much of children’s folklore stems from trying to establish a sense of authority in a world in which children have very little. By knowing the answer to this riddle, children may temporarily hold authority over a peer or adult who doesn’t. It is also worth noting that knowing the riddle or a similarly structured one creates an in-group; those children who have been tricked by the riddle can then go on to trick others. By learning the structure of the riddle, the recipient also learns to pay closer attention and look for important details in future riddles or logic puzzles.