A Simple Game of Fingers
How some traditions carry the memories of a generation
There was a drinking game that was popular in my father’s generation of Shanghainese men. It was loud, filled with energy and led to a both extreme laughter and drunkenness. Drinking games are common in many cultures, but this one was bewildering to see as well as hear. It happened towards the end of banquet style dinners. It is the habit of hosts and certain guests in Chinese formal dinners to wander among the round tables and offer toasts as an excuse to get everyone even drunker.
After a few rounds of polite toasts, sips of peach wine, whiskey or brandy another sort of round began. Men like my father who knew how to kick a dinner party into high gear would get up, approach a man at another table and challenge him to a game of Fingers. In Fingers, each player makes a fist and on a count of three each player extends their arm with a certain number of fingers extended. Each player shouts a sum at the same moment, hoping to shout the number that equals the total number of fingers from both players. If no one is correct, the arms and hands are reset and the round continues. Whoever finally guesses correctly offers the loser the chance to toast him with a drink. If a player is extremely good at this game, they could possibly make their way though quite a few opponents while remaining sober and leaving a wake of tottering friends in their wake.
What makes this game particularly fun is that as each player reloads again and again to try and guess the correct sum of fingers, they accompany their shouted guess with a brief description, which would become more and more bawdy and profane as the round went on. In the early stages, a shout could be: “Four little pigs!” In later rounds, it could become: “ Six hookers on a bed!” The cleverness of the number shouts would be greeted by applause and roaring laughter from the dinner guests. Whoever was on the losing side and was forced to take a few too many drinks would eventually cave in and surrender. Then both the men would congratulate and thank each other.
My father turned out to be one of the best Finger players I ever saw in my life. At dinner after dinner, he made his rounds like a deadly gunslinger and threw his hands in a snappy, stylized manner that looked more like he was throwing jabs or shooting imaginary lightning bolts out of the sky than just tossing some hands out with fingers extended. Sometimes his version of three would be a thumb, a forefinger and a pinky on his hand which was angled sharply across his body like a flamenco dancer. He had a host of moves and could throw endless hilarious wisecrack phrases out with his numbers, making the room crazy with delight.
This aspect of my father’s personality went along with his deep desire to make others happy. He was a large personality in social situations, with a booming voice and a great sense of humor. He needed everyone around him to have a good time. He had strong feelings about the nature of social gatherings.
Once when we left someone’s home after an afternoon barbecue, he took me to Chinatown for a bowl of noodles because he was still hungry. He grumbled about cheapskates and penny pinchers, saying that a good host always has more food and drink than necessary for their guests. He wondered why people wanted to entertain at all if they intended to scrimp and send their guests away hungry.
It was the duty of a host to create memorable events. Parties to him were celebrations to be cherished and always overdone. He wanted every dinner he hosted to be meaningful for everyone involved, because to him these gatherings were about holding on to something important.
As a boy I recalled the Mah Jong nights my mother hosted at our house. As I lay in bed I could hear the wild Shanghainese chatter downstairs along with the clatter of Mah Jong tiles. The next morning I would take in the chaos of the tiles on the card table, the empty glasses and bottles and bowls of watermelon seed shells, flavored peanut shells and other Chinese snacks. The snacks that my mother and father kept around for these parties were all a part of the world they brought with them from their younger days in Shanghai.
We would often go to Uwajimaya, the only Asian supermarket in Seattle in those days. We would also visit small shops in Chinatown. My mother bought her egg noodles directly from the Rose noodle factory and her watermelon seeds in bulk packages from a little shop near our favorite Dim Sum restaurant, where we would wait on edge for the cart carrying our favorite dishes to roll by.
Afterwards we would shop at Uwajimaya and our cart would fill with sesame rice crackers, dried squid, sachima (flour and butter cakes), egg roll cookies and more. I still have a taste for these snacks nowadays. To my parents, these were important remnants of their youth in Shanghai, the last vestiges of the bad old days before the wars and the revolution. Both of them fled China when Mao won the civil war, and both of their families were permanently fractured by the upheavals of the communist revolution. These simple snacks were a kind of connection to something they had lost.
When ordering a menu for a Chinese dinner it is standard practice to order one dish per person at the table and distribute those dishes as meat, fish, greens, soup, rice or noodles. If there are more that four or five, then one would add a chicken another seafood, a duck or perhaps a hot pot or second vegetable. An ideal number at dinner would be eight, since eight is an auspicious number and that would allow one to truly sample the chef’s work across a range of dishes.
Ordering dishes for a large group is something of an art form: one must take into account the range of flavors, textures, the sequence of dishes and the preparation methods. You did not want dishes that were too similar, but you also didn’t want dishes to clash. Some harmonious arrangement had to be arrived at, all the while taking into consideration who was at table and what the chef’s strengths and weaknesses were.
The selection of the menu of course was dependent on the regional cuisine the restaurant was offering. A Cantonese restaurant would have certain dependable dishes, as would Szechuan, Hunanese, Beijing style, or other. Shanghainese restaurants, once a rarity in America, would be sought after by my parents because they might be able to find the dishes of their youth.
After the hundreds of meals ordered by my mother and father in Chinese restaurants I developed something of a snobbish attitude towards imitation or low quality Chinese food. When friends would ask me to take them to a good Chinese restaurant, I tell them we would have to go to Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco or better yet, Shanghai.
My parents both enjoyed playing local hosts to a variety of Chinese people who either moved to Seattle, were passing through on business or needed advice about life in America. There were new graduates who were hired by various firms settling in Seattle who appreciated my parents support. There were entrepreneurs on business trips. There were friends of friends who were looking to build a new life in America. There was even a cargo ship captain who visited Seattle on his long hauls who would come to our house in his uniform. I thought he was cool.
Through all of these visits, I began to understand that my parents were people who were held in high esteem by many. They had succeeded in America and were good folks. Many looked up to them. As far away as mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan their phone number was often given out to people who might need a connection, an introduction or a sounding board in America.
It turns out that even after the war, revolution and upheavals there was a strong network that kept both my mother’s and my father’s family connected, even across hemispheres. In a time of very expensive long distance calls and no internet, international communications was not taken for granted in the diaspora of Chinese immigrants.
Even so, my parents kept their scattered communities alive and their families connected through social gatherings. Through dinners, Mah Jong and a simple drinking game like Fingers, my father and mother carried on their traditions and gave them to me as fond memories.
