![]() Why should this be ‘dumbed down’ because people can’t take the time to learn what the symbols mean?Īfter receiving all this backlash, the company has come forward with some sort of ‘apology’. It made me appreciate my culture and the game, even more, knowing what they represented. Part of the fun when playing the game as a child was familiarising with what the characters meant as I never learned how to read Cantonese when I was young. In my humble opinion, these new tiles are just tacky. ![]() Just think about us with all our red envelopes exchanged during Chinese New Year. For example, red is considered generally as a lucky colour in Chinese culture. In my eyes, the colours also have meaning. Honour tiles, for one, may remind people to pursue the truth. For example, some of these tiles remind people to care about the direction of their life. Whilst these images might be harmless to people out-with Chinese culture, they are merely forgetting these symbols have a lot more meaning to us than to them. Not flowers which would make a little more sense but bags of baking flour. The neon tiles have faced backlash because they now consist of colourful images such as flour. The audacity they have to rip off one’s tradition and culture they aren’t even a part of is nothing but insulting and disrespectful, where all they have done is completely whitewashed the heritage of the game. But it is also a way of spending meaningful and memorable time with our families, to build relationships with people within our community and feel close to our heritage. The company did not once think about what the game means to us as Chinese people. It seems that apparently, this ‘refresh’ (or whitewash) of the game is the only way to make it worth playing. Now that there is a White rebrand, suddenly the game is ‘stylish’ and ‘luxurious’ because the Chinese original was boring and lacked style. But the game isn’t theirs to change and the game was not made for what they deem pretty. This completely disregards the game because it wasn’t stylish enough for her. She, therefore, attempted to change an ancient game because it didn’t fit her eye of what she deemed as aesthetic. The traditional tiles… were all the same and did not reflect the fun that we had when playing with her friends… nothing came close to mirroring her style and personality. The founder of the game, Kate decided the game needed a ‘respectful refresh’. ![]() Within these tiles, there are Simple (numbers) sets (dots, bamboo and characters), Wind sets (east, south, west and north), Dragon sets (red, green and white) and a Flower set. The game consists of tiles based on Chinese characters and symbols. The game requires a lot of skill, strategy, as well as luck. Mahjong is a tile-based game developed during the Qing Dynasty in China in the 1800s, growing popular in the United States in the 1920s. I was annoyed that people could be so ignorant and disrespectful, that they deemed it was okay for them to change something that wasn’t theirs because it didn’t fit into their ‘aesthetic’. So when I see that three white women decided the ancient game needed a ‘modern makeover’, I was furious. ![]() With us being born and raised in Scotland, it was quite refreshing to be able to say we can bring some of our cultures within us and quite frankly, feel more Chinese, which I sometimes feel I have lost. We loved the game we could not only play for fun, but it was a way for us to bond as a family as we played it brought a bit of our heritage within us. From then on, we played every so often when we got the chance, with anyone we knew that knew how to play. My brother and I naturally wanted to play this game that seemed so fun and exciting. It was ingrained in me after watching my parents play with my aunts and uncles my grandparents play with their friends. I learned to play Mahjong when I was ten years old. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |