General games include those games everybody can play, such as joke telling, riddling and Chuanhua (passing flowers one by one). This category usually appears at banquets for ladies.
Contest games consist of archery, arrow pitching, chess playing, playing dice, finger guessing and animal betting. Among these, the latter two are most common.
In finger guessing, two players stretch out their right hands with a few fingers sticking out while the others are closed in their palms. Each of them usually roars a number from zero to ten. If the fingers sticking out add up to a player's number, then he wins and the loser will have to drink. There are many different versions of this game, depending on the region.
Animal betting is a very interesting game every Chinese person can play. In the game, one uses his chopstick to tap the other player's chopstick and at the same time speaks out one of four terms. There are four terms: stick, tiger, cock and insect. The rules are simple: Stick beats tiger; tiger eats cock; cock pecks insect; insect bores stick.
The literary games are mainly popular among bookworms, since they have received good education and know the essence of Chinese traditional culture. Intellectuals sometimes play the other two categories of drinking games too, although they consider those games vulgar. Beaux-esprit and cultured ladies prefer the elegant game, the literary game.
Usually a literary game is a unique and artful literary contest that requires superior wisdom, broad knowledge and fast response time. In order to animate the atmosphere, players do their best to improvise original, novel, unpredictable and well-crafted literary pieces, including quotations from scriptures, history, poems, proverbs, and fairy tales. Many Jiulings of this category are very artistic, and pleasingly worthy of literary appreciation. Bai Juyi, one of China’s greatest poets, even thought an elegant Jiuling was much more interesting than music.
Drinking Customs
Drinking one’s entire glass in a single gulp is a sign of boldness.
Drinking in China is not only about pleasure; it has much to do with respect, self-affirmation, friendship and the perpetuation of tradition. In China, no wedding ceremony is complete unless the bride and groom perform the traditional jiaobeijiu, which requires the couple to drink from their respective glasses while intertwining their arms, without spilling alcohol. The jiaobeijiu is followed by a dutiful toast to each of the newlyweds' parents.
The fact that drinking is so deeply rooted in Chinese culture worries doctors who specialize in alcohol abuse, and some are calling for changes in drinking practices. A law that forbids the sale of beverages with an alcohol content of 0.5 per cent or higher to anyone under age 18 took effect on January 1.
Drinking with One Heart
“Drinking with one heart” consists of two people drinking at the same time, sharing the same wine container. While drinking, each bends his or her arm around the other’s shoulder, ear to ear and cheek to cheek. One person holds the cup (or bowl, pipe) with the left hand, and the other with the right hand, both putting their mouths to the cup and drinking together. They can drain the cup with one gulp, or just take a sip, sing a ballad and take another sip, till they empty the cup.
Various kinds of utensils are used for this way of drinking, including wooden bowls, bamboo pipes, ox horn cups, ram horn cups, and trotter-shaped cups. This custom is shared by many nationalities. It is especially popular among the Yi, Miao, Lisu, Nu, and Dulong ethnic groups.
This drinking custom has different names in different areas, such as “heart-joining drinking,” “unity drinking,” “two people’s drinking” and “duo drinking.” Generally, the aim of “drinking with one heart” is clear: to removing misunderstanding, become friends with the same beliefs or strengthen the friendship between two people or two nationalities or tribes.
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