Childhood street games

What did anyone do before the age of video games?! There were a lot of old school street vendor games in Taiwan. No doubt it was a form of gambling but there are these games you pay to get a small piece of paper with number on it, and you win the prize according to the number. The prize can be candy, bean cake, meat jerky, toy, gum or even cash! Some even skip the number part, you just poke through a square on a sheet of many squares and the the prize is in the box below. You can find these games on sale in night market as a novalty of the past. (No wonder Asians love to gamble, we hook them young! ha ha!)

There were two vendors at night next to the rice mill in front of the post office building. One is some form of fishing. The idea is to take the "scoop", which is a metal wire circle with thin paper stretched over it and the circle attached to a little wood stick, and scoop out goldfish in a shallow pan size of a kiddie pool. Of course the paper is quite thin and usually not able to hold the weight of the goldfish once it is wet. If you somehow able to scoop the fish out, then you win that fish. Odds of it? Not so good. You can pay extra for a scoop with thicker paper of course.

The other vendor was this old lady, she lived right behind the rice mill. She was always very quiet and her game was fishing for small water balloons. Same idea that the string was quite thin and usually break. You too can buy a hook with thicker strings. Sometime she would fill the small water balloon with Winter Mellon Tea (sweet drink), and all you need was a needle prick and you would have some nice drink too!

I remember vividly how she would sit there in the night with one lonely light shinning. Not a lot of people frequent her business but she would come out night after night. Some neighborhood kid decided to mock her and set up a similar stand until his parents put a stop to it, but she was always quiet and just sit there tending her little business.

One year she was hit by one of the truck from the rice mill as it backing out of the ally. She was nowhere to be found for a long time and then she came out again. Lonely figure in the lonely night with a lonely light.

I am sure she is long gone but she still lives in my memory. I often wonder where was her family and children. However, I am sure someone is looking at my mom's lonely figure sitting in Starbucks, wondering where is her heartless son? :(