Yes! Ginseng (夜市人蔘), a night market-themed card game designed by Frenchman Alban Coueffe, which aims to promote Taiwan’s street food and night market culture and help foreigners learn Chinese, has raised more than NT$1 million (US$33,394) in less than two months.
The game instantly sets itself apart from other tabletop games, as it is packaged in a simple box with a pair of bamboo chopsticks and a rubber band to make it look just like a Taiwanese lunchbox.
Players, who each assume the role of a night market food stall owner, begin each round by laying three cards drawn from a deck of “order” cards on the table, facing up.
Photo courtesy of Yes! Ginseng
Each order card portrays a Taiwanese street food or traditional dish, the names of which are spelled out in Hanyu pinyin, such as “shan-yu-yi-mian” (鱔魚意麵, eel noodles) and “you-yu-geng” (魷魚羹, squid potage). Some even feature Hoklo, also known as Taiwanese. These are spelled out in Romanized Taiwanese, such as “o-a-min-suann” (蚵仔麵線, oyster vermicelli).
Each player by default receives a hand of five cards. These might include “ingredient” cards, which are used to “process” an order according to its required ingredients as shown on the order cards and make money, or “special cards,” which activate a special effect allowing a player to “attack” their opponents and either take their ingredients or thwart their next move.
Among the special cards are “picky customer,” which causes the targeted player to forfeit half of their ingredient cards; “police,” which forces the targeted player to pay a NT$2 fine or confiscates all their ingredient cards; and “hygiene inspection,” which requires all but the user of the card to forfeit their ingredient cards and put them back into the deck.
Photo: Sean Lin, Taipei Times
Before players can earn money for having made a certain meal, they are required to read its name out loud.
The player who is the first to make the agreed sum of money wins the game.
It is best played by foreigners with their language teachers or Taiwanese friends, Coueffe said.
Coueffe, who has lived in Taiwan for 15 years, said he wanted to make a game that is uniquely Taiwanese.
He had the opportunity to see his thoughts to take shape in September last year, when the design company his wife works for launched a project to design a paper product, Coueffe said.
“Night markets are a big part of Taiwanese culture. They are one of the first places Taiwanese take their foreign friends to,” he said.
He hopes his game could help foreigners learn Chinese while having fun, Coueffe said, adding that it can also be bought as a souvenir.
The game was launched on April 16 on online fundraising platform zeczec.com with a goal of raising NT$100,000. It had raised NT$1.14 million as of press time last night.
The fundraiser is to end on Thursday next week.
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