The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th
day of the 8th month of the Chinese lunar calendar.
For centuries, the Mid-Autumn Festival has
encouraged family reunions, big feasts and enjoyment of a beautiful full moon.
But for people in Xiamen, their exciting games have just started. A special
custom “Moon-cake Gambling” will take place in every Mid-autumn Festival.
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.
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.
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, 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, moon cake 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.