Chapter 4 The mahjong room in Cai Mansion

When I was about to graduate from junior high school, I realized that some people didn't play mahjong at home. This sounds exaggerated, but in fact I am just as ignorant as that. In the private school I went to, there were many students with very similar family backgrounds, and it was common for them to have poker games at home. So even if I go to my classmates' home to play, I often see "related facilities" for playing mahjong at home. For example, a square "mahjong room". Four chairs and two coffee tables. Interestingly, this "mahjong room" is often the "study room" of that family, with more or less books and paintings hanging on the walls.On the contrary, if you find that other people's homes are not like this, you will feel weird, thinking that their homes are "not yet finished".

There is another thing that is more common than the "mahjong room", that is, "all the adults in the family have gone out to 'entertain'", so that we often encounter two situations when we go to the home of our classmates.One is that the adults are not around until night; the other is that the adults are all there, but they are all "closed in the mysterious mahjong room" to play cards, and only appear in the dining room with a "boom" at dinner. What is "going out to socialize"? Of course I went out to play cards.But obviously it was rude to say that directly (it seemed to be "illegal" at that time, although many people were beating), so I was used to hearing the housekeeper who helped at home, or the "Old Chen" who helped my father with the sundries. When answering the phone, the very standard answer:

"Lawyer Cai and his wife have gone out to socialize." This "argument" is deeply ingrained in my mind, causing me to say, "He went out to 'socialize' when I received a call from my father until I finished my graduate school." The word "entertainment" in my dictionary means "go to someone's house to play mahjong, plus have dinner, and then continue playing mahjong after dinner". If you just go out for dinner or a wedding, according to the logic of our family, you will clearly say directly on the phone: "They went out to eat." Although eating and having a wedding are also "entertainment", as long as Excluding "playing mahjong", I will not use the word "entertainment".This has become one of my ridiculous "terms" over the years, just like when I was a child, when "Old Chen" answered the phone, he must say "Cai Mansion", which caused my answering machine to still use these three words: "...This is the phone recording of 'Cai Mansion'..." Friends who called often laughed at me.

Although there are mahjong tables in the "Mahjong room", the mahjong tiles and mahjong lamps are always kept in the storage room, and are only laid out an hour before the start of the game. This is also very strange, because the mahjong room has never been used for other purposes. According to my lazy thinking, wouldn't it be much more convenient to let the mahjong tiles be spread on the table all the time? But obviously our family is still very "scholar-official", and we are not very willing to display our "playthings" in public.This may have something to do with the laws at the time, but I believe it is the education of parents, who are unwilling to let us children regard mahjong as a part of daily life.

This has been carried out very successfully.Since childhood, my sister and I were not allowed to touch mahjong tiles, watch adults play cards, or help collect card boxes. So mahjong is very clear that it has become an "adult business" and a "ceremony" that requires some arrangement and preparation to proceed smoothly.Both my sister and I could catch a brief glimpse of the mahjong tiles on the table only after we got home from school. This made me never figure out how to play mahjong before college. The irony is that although I don't understand the principles of poker at all and have never observed a round of poker, I have "listened" to countless poker scriptures.

At that time, I played mahjong at home, and at 4:30 in the afternoon, I would definitely send snacks to the mahjong room. Dim sum has not changed much, but what each family is good at is different, and of course each has its own special skills.Our family usually has Huzhou Rotten Rou Zong, Meat Wonton Soup, Stewed Noodles with Braised Pork Flavor, or sometimes bought vegetarian buns. After dinner at 7:30, the door of the mahjong room opens, and the smoke comes out. The male guests are laughing and bowing to be seated, while the female guests at the other table are chattering. They usually go to the toilet to touch up their makeup before going to the dinner table.

Sometimes someone "connects the bank", and the set meal time of "7:30" is of course forced to postpone. This is a very interesting scene. If it is a female guest, someone has linked the bank at the table and has left the poker table to prepare for dinner. The four male guests will walk behind the four female guests, smoking cigars, and reviewing their partners' card skills. (If you invite two tables of guests at home, you usually invite four couples. Of course, this couple is in a "broad sense", and the male guest usually decides whether to bring the principal room, other rooms, or female guests according to the degree of acquaintance with the family. friend.)

But if it was a table with male customers, the female customers would seldom come in to look at the cards, so they hurriedly took advantage of this gap to touch up their makeup and go to the toilet, so as not to be seen by all the men with their oily looks. When all the guests are seated at the dinner table, our children will also be asked to eat together at the table.Therefore, the round dining table in the dining room at home has always been "carrying guests" for more than twelve people. After eating this meal, I have to listen to "Double Dragon Hug", "Qing Yise", and "Haidilao" at least a dozen times. Each card player verbally replays the thrilling scenes on the poker table just now. You laugh at me , I’m sorry for you, I heard my sister and I were confused and confused. Although I couldn’t understand their excitement and regret, I did know that mahjong tiles are of great importance.

After leaving home, I saw more and more simple and desperate methods of playing mahjong. Some directly took the bento they ordered to the card table, and ate the cards while eating.In Beijing, I also saw a pair of mahjong with fluorescent characters on a black background, which was specially used for continuing to fight in the dark when there was a "power outage".Seeing that mahjong tiles are so nakedly integrated into the sufferings of the people, our family's previous complicated "hands-off and table" game has become absurd.