Chinese Hospitality

Steve called me up yesterday to invite me over, along with Dave and Ken, to his house for dinner. Steve lives not too far from the school, about a 10 minute ride on a bus. When we got there Steve stopped in at a corner store to buy some beer, he refused to take any money from any of the Americans for it, and while he was waiting I took some pictures of the surrounding buildings. A Chinese guy came up to me and started talking to me in Chinese, a situation where I can only pretty much shrug. Steve talked to him for a bit and told us that he was the security guard and he was new and curious if we lived in any of the buildings around there. We went up to Steve's apartment, which is a forth of fifth floor walk up, through an unlit stairwell. I don't think you'd ever see stairs so dark in America because people would be too worried about being mugged while going home. It actually gave me a chance to use the little flash light on the top of my phone for a second. Steve said that he usually has a flash light with him for the stairs. His home was something like 5 rooms totaling an area only slightly larger then my apartment, there may have been another floor but I think he was looking to rent that out. There are 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a main room with a table and TV. Steve's wife Spring was in the kitchen cooking most of the time and I didn't really see too much of her. In fact through out dinner she'd only appear to put some more food out on the table maybe ask if we liked it then disappear again. Ken and Dave asked if we could wait for her to join us before eating, but while I know only a very little Chinese, even I understood an emphatic no.

The dinner was great consisting of a bunch of different thing put in the middle of the table which every basically communally ate from. Steve's son Mike was also there, I think he knows a good bit of English since whenever Steve asked him if he knew what an English word meant he was able to come up with the correct equivalent in Chinese. He didn't on the other hand like talking in English at all. I'd compare him to a child whose parents insist he has piano lessons, he may know how to play but not really like to. After dinner we played a game of Monopoly which I was told Mike won at last time. It was pretty even in the beginning with no one being very near to a monopoly. About half way everyone started trading fast. I got the first two Monopolies, purple and light blue, which aren't worth so much but I had enough cash on hand to build hotels on all of them within two turns. The result was I controlled a whole side of the board and almost everyone who passed was bound to land on at least one of my properties. I was then able to absorb a huge amount of cash and force people into deal giving away a lot of there other properties to stay in until controlled almost everything. Mike played well again being the last person left before I won. Steve was really funny saying welcome every time some one landed on one of his houses. Mike was incredibly aggressive and mostly made very shrewd deals.

The we played a game that is called either Five in a Row or Gomoku. It is played on the same board as a Chinese game called Go or wéiqí. There are a number of spaces where little black or white stones can be put down with the objective being that a played puts five in a row. Mike is pretty good at it and beat Ken about 5 times went 3-1 against Dave. I won the first game lost the next two but then won two more to be 3-2. It seems really simple at first but has a lot of complexity in where you can force people to move. One of the pictures up here is of me playing Mike in the final game. After that it was about midnight and Ken and Dave had to leave on some sort of hiking trip. We got some taxis out side of Steve's apartment. It was really interesting to see where Chinese people really live and what the place looked like. Honestly it looked like a small apartment in pretty much any place. Beds, kitchen, TV, computer, all looked just like you would see in America. Probably the biggest difference was Spring spending the whole time in the kitchen. The fact that she doesn't speak English was part of it, but gender relations are just different here. I think she may be a teacher also, or at least has a masters in something, but I didn't really get to talk to her much.