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Let me slow down a bit and write about high school first. What I wrote before was mostly about my academic life, but study and entertainment have always been inseparable. So here I’ll look back once more at the various forms of entertainment and games I’ve enjoyed since childhood:
When I was very little there was nothing especially distinctive. I played the toys that ordinary little boys liked to play with, and most of them I barely remember now.
What I do remember is that when I was a child I often liked to buy those pretty elastic balls made of rubber. At the time, along Fuyou Road there were many stalls selling these balls. One especially interesting way of selling them was to pay one yuan to draw lots: whichever ball you drew was the one you got. It was quite fun.
Transformers and the like were of course indispensable, but the toy I remember most vividly, and which until recently seemed to still be around somewhere, was a kind of egg-shaped thing. After opening the “eggshell,” you could flip out the limbs inside and close the shell again, and it would become a tiger, a rhinoceros, a skeleton, a beetle, and so on. That was pretty fun too.
When I was five or six I studied chess in some class—international chess, that is, while also studying Chinese painting and so on, all of which I’ve now completely forgotten. Around the same time, or perhaps even earlier, I learned Chinese chess at home. Later, one set of international chess pieces was turned by me into toys, because I liked flipping the pieces out and playing with them as dolls, while Chinese chess was usually something I played for pleasure with my family.
It is even said that my mother was the first to teach me Chinese chess. But from the time I became sensible, I was already far beyond my mother’s level, because besides the rules she understood nothing at all… My father’s playing was a little better; when I was very little he was still no match for me, but very soon I sensed that his level wasn’t high. My grandfather played chess well, and in my childhood he seemed almost lofty and out of reach. As I grew a little older I could play him as an equal, losing more than I won, and only when I was close to high school did I finally feel confident that I could beat him. My cousin’s strength was of course always about the same as mine. We played each other the most, and often the two of us would also team up to play against my grandfather. The strongest player of all was my maternal grandfather. I didn’t see him often when I was little, so whenever we met I would certainly cling to him and insist on playing chess. Regrettably…
Chinese chess also had all kinds of variations in my cousin’s and my hands. The silliest one was simply flicking the pieces back and forth, and there were also all kinds of bigger-or-smaller games, as well as concealed-chess games like Land Battle Chess, and so on. We also played military chess and such in childhood, but the period when we played it most was fifth grade and the third year of middle school. At those times four-player military chess was all the rage in the class, and I especially liked it. But what I did most of all was act as “the notary.” I was practically a full-time notary the whole time…
One of the most classic games of my childhood was the legendary “Cheetos rings”! That was a free gift included with a puffed snack. It was round or octagonal, with a hollow pattern in the inner ring, about the size of a one-yuan coin, while the outer edge was pointed, making the whole thing look like a flying saucer. It could be used as a throwing dart, but very few people actually played it that way. The classic way to play was to place two Cheetos rings on a flat surface. Because of the shape of the outer edge, just a light tap with a fingernail would make the ring bounce up and hop a little distance. When two Cheetos rings battled each other, the players took turns operating them. If one ring pinned the other underneath it (it had to cover the inner ring) or forced the other off the table, that counted as a win. This game was really incredibly durable; I don’t know how long it was popular, and of course it eventually disappeared. And all the countless Cheetos rings I collected back then—I have no idea where they went. I miss them very much…
At Sinan I didn’t really play games. In class I sat upright with perfect posture; during breaks I would simply rest my head on the desk. At most I played things like rock-paper-scissors. Later, though, when I was studying olympiad math at the Shaoke Station, I often played various games.
One physical game was paper-ball slapping. This was mainly something I played with two old classmates during the period when we were skipping a grade for competition training in fourth grade: we crumpled up scratch paper and slapped it back and forth with our bare hands. It was that simple.
The most classic game at the time was what we called “Wild Little Brat (ju)”—a combination of the traditional ruler-flicking game and the rubber-flicking game. Flicking rulers and flicking erasers were basically the same: you took turns flicking them across the tabletop, and whoever’s object fell off the table lost. Combining the ruler and the eraser meant this: the tabletop was the sea, the ruler was the boat, and the eraser was placed on the ruler. Each turn you could flick either the ruler or the eraser. The ultimate goal was to “kill” the other person’s eraser by flicking it, and the ruler could be sacrificed. But if the eraser fell into the water, it would also “drown”; if the eraser was not on the ruler but fell onto the tabletop, then within the next round it had to jump back onto the boat (landing on it also counted), or else the boat had to be flicked over to rescue it; otherwise it would drown! Compared with simply flicking rulers or erasers, this game was obviously much richer, and required much more skill and strategy. Occasionally we would also bring out the pencil case and use it as an “aircraft carrier,” and so on.
Speaking of tabletop games, of course one cannot leave out coin flicking. But the simple game of flicking a coin off the table is too monotonous and violent; the key problem is that once the coin flies away, it is a pain to pick up. One improved version works like this: each person controls several coins, and each time you flick you must hit one of the opponent’s coins—grazing it or colliding head-on are both fine—but you cannot flick the opponent’s coin off the table, and of course you cannot send your own coin flying off either. If you don’t hit any of the opponent’s coins, or if you commit a foul, then one of your coins is considered dead. Another way to play, involving many coins at once, is coin “football.” Each person uses about five one-yuan coins, with one side heads and the other side tails, and uses one-jiao or five-jiao coins as the ball. Using a pencil case as the goal, one coin serves as the goalkeeper; when the opponent has possession, our side can use one finger to press the goalkeeper and move it around inside the penalty area to make saves at any time. You can “pass the ball”; if one side can “possess” the ball continuously, then they can keep operating continuously. If the ball touches the opponent, or if our side collides with the opponent, possession changes…
At Cao Guangbiao Primary School there was also a classic guessing game—“dong-pa-sging” (I don’t know how to spell it), where these three sounds stood for the three options: rock, paper, and scissors. It could be played by two people or by many. When it was one person’s turn to make a move, that person would suddenly shout a slogan and simultaneously change to the corresponding hand shape; the opponent also had to change at the same time (of course, keeping the original form was also possible). If the opponent’s hand shape matched mine, then he lost. One way to play was to take turns in sequence; another was for the person whose hand shape “beat” the other’s to make the move. In elementary school the latter was popular, because this method allowed one to keep changing moves in succession and catch the opponent unprepared. There was also a two-handed version: each time you shouted two slogans in a row and changed both hands’ shapes simultaneously. If one of the opponent’s hands matched one of mine, then that hand had to sit out.
By the time I got to Dong Gegu Middle School, the popular guessing games had new twists again. This game was absolutely unique to Dong Gegu. We watched ourselves design and perfect this game bit by bit: its mature form was extremely complex. The most popular version was based on Dragon Ball, with characters of various abilities, each with “health” and “energy.” You would guess fists in the ordinary way, and the winner could choose to “spend” energy and add a few units of energy. Many characters could also transform multiple times. Or you could choose to attack directly. There were ordinary attacks that did not consume energy, as well as small-leek attacks, medium-leek attacks, old-leek attacks, and so on, along with various auxiliary tools and skills, such as “block,” “hold down tightly,” “drain blood,” and so forth. It could be played as a two-person competition, called “one-on-one,” and even more so as a multiplayer game. With six or seven people it was at its liveliest, and that was called “gang beating.” Besides the Dragon Ball system, there were many other systems as well. The oldest ones were Flat Legs, Sheep, and so on (classmates’ nicknames), and later came Teacher, Police, and the like. At Dong Gegu, every recess the classroom would become indescribably noisy. Later this game was also introduced into the all-science class, though of course the level of excitement was much lower there… This game can truly be said to be a distinctive feature of Dong Gegu; at that time almost all the boys knew how to play it. But by then I had once again become detached and independent. Although I still had some understanding of the rules, I never took part in this activity. Perhaps because playing this kind of guessing game necessarily required excitement, shouting, and yelling—otherwise it would have no fun—and that did not suit my preference for quiet. Of course, this was only a matter of degree. When playing dong-pa-sging, one also had to shout, but that was within a range that felt more moderate to me.
As early as fifth grade or fourth grade, I already had my own computer, a 586; including the one in the dormitory now, I have successively owned four generations of desktop computers. Playing on computers is, of course, one of the most important forms of entertainment for us cross-century youths…
At first, aside from games, I also played Windows directly, “playing” with every item I could click in the Start menu, and later I also played with Office. One year my mother suddenly decided to take an office automation exam, so I accompanied her in “playing” too, and in the end I passed it before she did. Basic computer operations don’t need to be learned—you just play with them and you’ll get used to them.
The earliest game was one that came with the first computer I bought. At the time I could choose any game I wanted, so I chose the most expensive one. I remember its price was 198 yuan then—C&C (Command & Conquer). A rough but also durable real-time strategy game, a classic from before StarCraft.
At the same time, I spent money on a role-playing game: Wulongyuan. I played it a few times. Pretty fun.
The most durable game in middle school was a domestic real-time strategy game I later bought, “Red Cliff.” I played it for a long time, yet I never once cleared it, because whenever I got to a certain level the game would always crash…
The 98 Soft-Romance Edition of Legend of Sword and Fairy is undoubtedly the most classic role-playing game. When I first bought it, I only played through it once, but later I replayed it often, and just last year I revisited it again.
By an accidental chance in middle school, I bought Heroes of Might and Magic II, a classic turn-based strategy game. I say “by an accidental chance” because that time I first bought the famed StarCraft. The shop owner said that genuine copies of that kind were very hard to find on the market, truly a rare opportunity. But when I took it home and played it for half a day, I said it was boring and went back to the shop to return it! The shop owner stared at me dumbfounded, as if looking at an alien, and in the end exchanged it for Heroes of Might and Magic. This event symbolizes my shift toward turn-based strategy games. That suited my temperament: I liked grand, bold strategy games, but I also liked to play them in a refined and quiet way. I did not like frantically banging on the keyboard in a flurry of panic and tension; instead, I preferred to play one turn at a time, calm and composed.
Then came Romance of the Three Kingdoms V, and later Civilization: Rule the World I and II, as well as Civilization III. These turn-based strategy games were my favorites. As for the StarCraft, Warcraft, and CS that were popular among my peers, I almost never touched them at all.
The Civilization series is the one I like best. It plays the “soul” of civilization, from prehistoric society all the way to future civilization, planning culture, agriculture, commerce, industry, entertainment, technology, politics, diplomacy, military affairs, construction, immigration, exploration, pollution, and so on and so forth. Compared with simply building troops and leading them into battle over and over, it is much more interesting.
The only kind of real-time game I still play often now is probably flight shooting games, like “Raiden” and the like. Among them there was also a particularly “abstract” game called “Special Training,” also known as “If You’re a Man, Last 20 Seconds.” It was only 17k: a small window, bullets flying everywhere, controlling a tiny plane to dodge the bullets—just that simple. Very durable. When I first started playing it, I could easily last more than 20 seconds; my record is over a minute. Although it is a real-time game, in fact it also trains one’s steadiness of mind.
The main way I use computers for entertainment now is watching Japanese anime.
As for sports games, on the one hand I’ve disliked exercise since childhood, and on the other hand I prefer elegant, quiet sports and dislike crowds of people jostling and crashing into one another, so I’ve rarely participated in them over the long term. What I like are various kinds of “small-ball” games—three-man ball, badminton, table tennis, and so on. Still, I do quite like watching football matches and the like.
——————————————(to be continued)——————————2006-07-29
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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