I’m in mainland China for the first time, and the first six hours have been a very interesting experience. All positive things, just very interesting. I’ll be spending the next two weeks the Gold Coast Marina Club, a state-owned hotel located on the banks of the Pearl River in Guangzhou. This place has embraced a strange variety of styles, including wood paneled walls decorated with model sailboats that remind me of old US beachclub hotels out of the late 70s, giant romanesque pillars spread throughout the lobby, and a dome shaped ceiling that is painted to look like a replica of the cloud ceiling at the Venetian. All things considered, it’s a very comfortable place to stay.
Also, before I get to drinking games, a quick note on internet censorship. All in all, the internet seems to be working fine, albeit with a few quirks. As expected Facebook is completely blocked. If I try to go to YouTube, the main page will load, but I can’t search for any videos. My Google reader is on the fritz, displaying hundreds of old entries from the past few weeks, saying that they were published today. I Googled the TS incident (I won’t write out out), and surprisingly had no trouble finding articles describing the event. Also, parts of my blog won’t load, and I’m assuming this is only a problem for me, and that it looks just fine from the outside.
Onto beer. So after going to out dinner with a few local students, myself and a couple classmates decided we’d like to find a bar and have a few drinks. We jumped in a cab, and the cabbie took us up the road to a place called St. Peters Lounge. We walked in, and the outdoor lounge on the riverside was filled with locals drinking beer from those giant 3 liter table taps, most of them shouting quite a bit. There were also some private karaoke rooms off to the side. We ordered a table tap ourselves, and then were also given a bunch of cups containing dice. We looked around more closely and realized that just about everyone was playing dice games (with the exception of a nearby man passed out with his head on the table – his friends didn’t seem to find it unusual).
After trying and failing to invent our own dice game, I approached three guys at a nearby table and signaled that I wanted to watch. They were very welcoming, and told me to sit down and play with them. Soon after, my two friends joined. Here’s how it works. Everyone at the table has a six ounce glass, and there are two other glasses in the center of the table. One contains two dice, and the other is a community beer cup. Each person takes turns rolling the two dice by vigorously shaking the cup, and then slamming it on the table while yelling “Ja!” which I’m told means “Beer!”. I’m actually surprised the glass didn’t break from repeatedly slamming the cup down.
The key here is to roll a 7. If you do, you get to add some beer to the community beer cup. It’s kind of like betting, because you add as much as you want, raising the stakes. The catch is that after rolling a 7, you go again. If you roll a 9, you have to drink everything in the community cup by pouring it into your own cup, and if you role an 8, you drink half of it. You get to go again after rolling either. But if you roll any other number, you’re in the clear and it’s the next persons turn. Also if you role doubles, the order reverses. There seemed to be a disagreement among the locals over what happens if you roll two fours – do you reverse the order or drink? They ultimately decided drink. The game typically goes around, with the community cup slowly filling until someone rolls a 9, at which point everyone screams and the person drinks. It was surprisingly fun, and we played this for longer than I’d like to admit. That’s all for now.