This Friday, January 24, is the Chinese lunar New Year and the traditional Korean New Year. Korean New Year (설날), also known as the old festival (구정), is a traditional festival in South Korea. Traditionally also known as "New Year’s Day" (원단), "Yuan Ri" (원일), Year First" (세수). The country provides three days off for the Spring Festival, which is the longest holiday of the year. In 1999, South Korea officially resumed the Spring Festival holiday. In both countries, the New Year's money is given to the younger generation during the Spring Festival. The difference is that the Chinese people use red envelopes, while the Koreans are used to using white envelopes. During the Chinese New Year, mahjong is the most commonly played at family gathering, South Korea has a similar game called Flower Card.
Korean flower card is also called Korean flower chart (English name “Go stop”), from the Japanese traditional card game Japanese flower pa (English name “Koi koi”), introduced to South Korea from Japan in the 19th century, quickly spread by the public, become the most popular entertainment game in South Korea, as popular in South Korea as "mahjong" in China. People who like to watch Korean dramas can often see the flower card in it. The size of the Korean flower card is much smaller than ordinary poker, but it is also much thicker, mostly made of plastic, the back of the card is concave and convex texture, the front is smooth. If you touch the flower cards, it feels somewhere between poker and mahjong.
The flower card is named because of the various patterns on the card. There are 48 basic cards in total, divided into 12 groups, each group represents a month, 4 cards per month. At the same time, these 48 cards are divided into 4 kinds according to the score and category. So, the game is a little difficult to get started. First, players must remember the card surface, because cards are divided by month in the horizontal and by category in vertical, and players need to remember the card combination when someone win, so players need to memorize a lot of things. Beginners, for example, tend to confuse May’s Orchids with November’s Wutong trees. Then according to the number of players to take the starting hand cards, at the same time there will be public cards on the table, the game is in counterclockwise order. If there are cards of the same month on the table, you can take these two cards and pull one card from the top of the public card, if there are cards of the same month on the table, you can also take them away. Until the turned card and cards on the table are not consistent, then left that card on the table, the next player starts to play. When a player reaches the specified victory score, he must choose to GO or STOP. If you choose STOP, you end the game and become the winner. If GO is selected, the game continues. Add 1 point to the player who chooses GO, and the points continue to accumulate.
The design of Japanese flower card is much more exquisite than that of Korean flower card. Korean flower card is greatly simplified on its basis, more inclined to a symbolized thing, which is more conducive to people's memory. Just as mahjong is important to the Chinese, flower cards are part of Korean traditional culture witness many happy moments of family gatherings.
Comments