Mid-Autumn Festival - Moon Festival

Held on the 15th day of the 8th month each year (like most celebrations the date changes based on the lunar calendar), this is a huge festival, second only to the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year. Along with the traditional eating of mooncakes and revering deities including Chang'e, Xiamenese enjoy a particular gambling game called Bo Bing which uses 6 dice to win various prizes. Everywhere you go shopping you hear the rattle of dice in porcelain bowls as people roll for the chance to win all types of items. And so it was that the university invited expat women to enjoy a dinner and evening of Bo Bing with the Association for Xiamen Expatriates (AXE) group of Xiamen. First our group met Cherry, our university contact just outside the administration building on campus and our van driver drove us to the Haicang Tourist Area of Xiamen where a section of land has been set aside to inform tourists about the history of Bo Bing. Unfortunately for us, the tour guide spoke in chinese though there were just enough of our group who spoke chinese to translate for us. We wound our way up the small mountain as we learnt a little about how Bo Bing came into being.

The China Daily provided a succinct summary of the legend (skip to the end of the blue type if you aren't particularly interested):

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 after the winners in ancient imperial examinations, and has 63 different sized mooncakes as prizes.

From the lowest to the highest, the titles of six ranks are Xiucai (the one who passed the examination at the county level), Juren (a successful candidate at the provincial level), Jinshi (a successful candidate in the highest imperial examination), Tanhua, Bangyan and Zhuangyuan (respectively the number three to number one winners in the imperial examination at the presence of the emperor).

Game players throw the dice by turns. Different pips they count win the player a relevant "title" and corresponding type of mooncakes. The lucky player who gets the pips to make it the title of "Zhuangyuan," will be the biggest winner in the game, and gain the largest mooncake.

In ancient China, to win the imperial examination was the only way to enter an official career which was the dream of most learners, since the examination system was established in the Sui Dynasty (AD 581-618). No wonder then, if a person won "Zhuangyuan" through the imperial examination, the success would bring great honour to both him and his family, followed with a high-level position and a great sum of money.

The game has something to do with the number "four." In mooncake gambling, the pips for most ranks of the awards are related to this number. For instance, one die of four pips wins you "Xiucai" and the smallest mooncake. And if you get four or more dice of four pips, then congratulations - you win "Zhuangyuan." The game provides 32 mooncakes for "Xiucai," 16 for "Juren" and the rest may be deduced by analogy. Only one player will win the lucky title "Zhuangyuan." That is why a total of 63 mooncakes are prepared for the game.

As a game well combining culture, folk custom and recreation, mooncake gambling soon got popular among troops. So General Zheng approved of the soldiers playing the game in turn from the 13th to the 18th of the 8th month around the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Since then, "Bo Bing" has become a popular traditional activity among local people. On every Mid-Autumn Festival, family members gather to gamble mooncakes, deep in arguments about who will be the winner. Also cake confectioneries will produce many kinds of gambling cakes to cater to the market. Xiamen people believe that the person who wins "Zhuangyuan" in the game, will have good luck that year. And the Mid-Autumn Festival is the second important holiday in Xiamen besides Spring Festival.

Nowadays, the mooncakes are not the only kind of award. With the upgrade of people's living standards, daily necessities, household appliances and even money can also be won.

We also passed through a museum of Bo Bing which had one introductory and one summary paragraph about what it contained in poor english (a candidate for my red pen!) and the rest was in chinese. We even got the chance to throw dice in a huge Bo Bing bowl that was three or four feet in diameter. We then moved on to the dinner.

The restaurant was how I'd come to expect, circular tables seating around 10 people, a bottle of orange drink, a bottle of coke and a bottle of sprite (all warm) on the table. A small wine glass was half-filled for toasts and there was no other alcohol to be seen anywhere - though I'm not sure that you couldn't have ordered something should the mood have taken you.

Altogether there seemed to be around 20 tables already occupied by ladies and so our group took a table and waited. I met some lovely ladies that evening - some of whom had been in Xiamen for a number of years and some of whom who had, like me, just arrived. We enjoyed a typical Xiamenese meal, heavy on seafood, were entertained by some talented traditional musicians (you can see the large Bo Bing bowl on stage held in a wooden cradle presumably to help move it), toasted with the president of AXE, and heard some speeches from various position holders of AXE - and then the gambling was on! Around and around the circle the Bo Bing bowl travelled and slowly we gathered what the rules were. The gambling was wild and furious at many tables as the experienced ladies celebrated winning toothpaste, shampoo and conditioner, facial cream, washing powder and soap, and even an electric hotpot/rice-cooker. Here the ladies are getting all of the prizes for our table out and we are working out exactly how hard you can throw the dice without them bouncing out of the bowl (for you then miss a turn if that happens). Up on stage was the "final" Bo Bing bowl where the Zhuangyuan from each table would go up to play against each other for the major prize (which escapes my memory at the moment). Our table was pretty slow as we took quite a while to work out the various "winning" combinations so towards the end of the evening most of the other tables were finished and we were still a long way from finishing - so they furnished us with two bowls to speed things up!Afterwards we made our way back to the van - taking an elevator all the way down instead of walking back down the mountain. The views of the Haicang Bridge and city were lovely and I'm sorry that my camera (or was it my skill) did not do them justice. The first photo is of the complex looking up from the carpark - the elevator is the tall lit object. The second is of the Haicang Bridge and the third is the city.Actually, with the combinations of dice rolls being the way to win this reminded me a little of Yahtzee - and also of an american game I was introduced to late in my US visit: Bunco (thanks Sarah and Donita!) albeit without the alcohol!