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“Cheers or Tears of Shadong”: Chinese Youth Mocks the Hated Drinking Culture by Making an Outlandish Board Game

By Dan
Jul. 4, 2022 updated 04:26

Interview by: Isabella Jiangcheng

Drinking is a serious business in China, and the Chinese are getting more alcoholic than ever. From 1978 to 2019, the annual alcohol consumption per capita in China almost tripled to 7.4 liters and is projected to surpass the US by 2030.

However, for many young Chinese folks, drinking has become a social burden that they wish to avoid at all costs. In many parts of China, excessive alcohol consumption more often happens during business banquets and grand family gatherings and is mostly about the demonstration of wealth, maturity, and social hierarchy than having a good time.

There's an entire set of etiquette that participants are expected to follow, including being forced to get drunk, humiliated, or even sexually harassed, in the name of "fun" and "forming special bonds".

For anyone who's familiar with this drinking culture (and had some bad experience with it), it's not a surprise that someone would find a creative way to make fun of such awkward social interactions. What is a surprise, though, is how outlandishly inventive and nuanced this mocking has become.

Chen Gaoyuan, a young artist from Shandong, turned his knowledge of the unspoken rules of drinking at Chinese banquets into a board game, played on a realistic dining table decorated with prop food and drinks. Superpixel had an exclusive interview with Chen, and asked him to shed some light on his sarcastically surreal creation.

The game is named "Cheers or Tears" and involves a minimum of eight players on two sides, "The Hosts" and "The Guests"

The tablecloth at the demo was custom made with a Shandong banquet seating chartThe tablecloth at the demo was custom made with a Shandong banquet seating chart

Each round lasts about 30 minutes, and players take turns to raise a toast and play a card. A card can have one of three actions: "Attack" to request an opponent drink a certain amount of (real or fictional) shots, "Defend" to block incoming drinking requests, and "Counter-Attack" to pull the Uno reverse card and force attackers to drink themselves.

Each player has a 20-shot “health bar” and will be disqualified if forced to take too many shots. By the end of each round, the side that has drank fewer combined shots is the winner. However, the person on the winning team that drinks the most shots will be awarded MVP.      

An MVP at the game demo shows off his medal.An MVP at the game demo shows off his medal.

What really shines in the game is the authenticity that has been dialed all the way to eleven.  Each player will be assigned roles in one of 4 levels of social status, Primary Host and Primary Guest, Secondary Host and Secondary Guests etc., mimicking a real banquet setup, and will have to sit around the table accordingly, where the "chief host" sits at the chair squarely facing the entrance, and the most prominent guest sits right next to them on their right hand side and so on, to  establish authority immediately for anyone arriving the dining room.

When a player makes a toast, they must follow the suggested action on the card they're playing. These instructions are often about real scenarios that can be seen in Chinese banquets, such as "You're late, punish yourself with three drinks first" – then the opponent would have to add three drinks to their scoreboard.

Just like a real Chinese banquet, these drinking actions are all about social hierarchy and power games. A high-value card that can force all superiors to drink normally requires the player to read out a long and carefully crafted speech, flattering those above them humbly. However, if a superior role wants to make a lower role drink, they only need a low-value card that requires them to say some simple phrases. If an individual of a lower role does not want to debase themselves, they can only resort to hustles like secretly swapping drinks with soda to save a few shots.

“It’s a great opportunity for me to participate in this grand event. All the distinguished guests are working wholeheartedly on helping us young artists. I’m so honored and appreciative that all of you are sacrificing your personal time to be with us, checking and mentoring our work. And I hereby wish to have a toast with all the leaders and elders at the table.”“It’s a great opportunity for me to participate in this grand event. All the distinguished guests are working wholeheartedly on helping us young artists. I’m so honored and appreciative that all of you are sacrificing your personal time to be with us, checking and mentoring our work. And I hereby wish to have a toast with all the leaders and elders at the table.”

Even the set of the game is strikingly authentic and intentionally so. Chen, the creator of the game, told us that the prop dishes are not just decorations to promote a sense of immersion but also to shape the mood in theatre.

And this mood theatre is important because the primary goal of this game is to recreate the uncomfortable atmosphere of a real banquet while laughing at its pretentiousness and finally extract some amount of fun out of these awkward social interactions when they should be fun in the first place.

Chen lived his childhood and teen years in Qingdao, Shandon, a part of China that was home to the great philosopher Confucius and has the most infamous drinking culture in the present day. Chen says he finds countless content creators from Shandong promoting drinking culture through livestreams and short videos.

"There are tips and tricks that have been spread far and wide among my people,”… ”Drinking has been a part of life that everyone loves and hates.” Chen says when he tries to explain the folk wisdom of “Fish Farming” on a real banquet, where experienced drinkers use all the tricks passed down by generations to look like they’re sincerely drinking while actually not.

Some demo testers chose to drink Tsingtao beer over mineral water.Some demo testers chose to drink Tsingtao beer over mineral water.

In preparation for designing the game, Chen interviewed many of his relatives in their 40s and 50s. To his surprise, those relatives were very enthusiastic about teaching him everything they knew. It almost felt like they were treating passing down this knowledge as a way to form bonds within the family like you might by fishing or camping. They even sent Chen a bunch of Tiktok videos teaching him how to toast.

Chen thought that if his family knew he was not consulting them for drinking skills to step into society but just wanted to jeer at the drinking culture in a satirical way, some would probably be disappointed.

"I have always been uncomfortable with this kind of power play at a banquet, and the acting up of toasting makes me particularly embarrassed", Chen says. Since he was a child, Chen has often participated in these family banquets where his parents would ask him to propose a toast to the older family members. He even read a "toast speeches" book, which covers flattering words for occasions from business banquets to supermarket openings. But Chen never really bothered to master these speeches.

You can get the toast speeches book for 7.95 on Amazon.You can get the toast speeches book for 7.95 on Amazon.

The discomfort wasn't just one-way; the adult Chen felt even more awkward at the other end of the table. At a family gathering to celebrate his college acceptance, Chen's uncle asked his daughter to propose a toast to Chen while mentoring her with this life tip, "If you don't learn to propose a toast now, you'll find yourself in trouble when you enter the society."

"It feels more embarrassing receiving a toast than giving one as if I had been an accomplice to this system that I thoroughly dislike." The look on Chen's cousin's face reminded Chen of himself not so long ago – cringing but feeling obligated to please.

Chen’s motive to mock this drinking culture is not only coming from his own experiences. In 2020, a new employee at a state-owned bank in Beijing was slapped at a dinner after refusing to drink, and a female employee at Alibaba reported her boss for sexual assault at a business dinner. News like this ignited fury on the internet, and Chen felt the urge to do something about this culture that sickened him.

At the time, Chen was a freshman at the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts, and there was a class project to work around the theme of maps. He immediately thought of the seating chart of the Shandong banquets. The various techniques to pressure others to drink and the contest between the hosts and the guests naturally led him to a board game. "A parody of drinking culture in the form of a board game. How fun! I hope it can encourage people to participate and contemplate."

The demo did attract a group of artists to play, and a much wider audience showed interest after reading it on the news. Chen is currently working with friends on the game's artwork, expecting to start crowdfunding in August.The demo did attract a group of artists to play, and a much wider audience showed interest after reading it on the news. Chen is currently working with friends on the game's artwork, expecting to start crowdfunding in August.

Although the game was designed to prompt reflection on the drinking culture in China, Chen is open to different interpretations: you can be an experienced banquet goer and strive to be the MVP as you'd do in real life, or you can simply enjoy the game over a Coke and learn some small skills. There’s even a special card in the game that allows the player to leave halfway and then come back at the end to pull themselves out of this game completely.

As for whether players can see the critical mind behind the cards, Chen does not seem too concerned, as long as people find them funny. "The joking nature of the board game dilutes the oppressiveness of drinking culture," Chen said with a wry smile, "Criticism is not going to make any change."

"It's not like I can bring the whole drinking culture down by making a game, so I might as well leave the judgement to the players."