Tuesday 7 September 2021

Moon cakes and chess

Hello, Chinese eighth lunar month! It starts today. We've put the Hungry Ghosts Festival well behind us - but was there a festival at all this year?? I could hardly tell - and are now looking forward to the celebration of the Mid-Autumn "Moon Cake" Festival in 15 days' time. Coincidentally, today is also the start of the 15th solar term known as Pek Lor (白露) or White Dew. It is not often that both the Chinese lunar and lunisolar calendars coincide but this year is somewhat special!

Talking about moon cakes, a few days ago, I received a mysterious box marked "priority delivery" and inside, I discovered gleefully that it contained a box of four moon cakes from the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Accompanying the moon cakes was a chequered box which, when opened, revealed a set of wooden chess pieces. But what puzzled me were the six dice pieces. Whatever were they for? 

This prompted me to message the hotel for an answer and here, you see the exchanges I had with their marketing staff. I am no closer to knowing why they chose to promote an obscure variant like "dice chess" over regular, over-the-board chess that is played by millions of people around the world. Perhaps their designer, Melinda Looi, can explain better, but I haven't got her team to respond to my enquiry yet.

PS. In my messages with the hotel, I mentioned only three pieces of dice because in their promotional picture, only three were shown. But there are actually six. Unfortunately, that picture has since disappeared from their website.



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