Ô ăn quan

Vietnamese children play "Ô ăn quan"
"Ô ăn quan" board

Ô ăn quan (literally: Mandarin Square Capturing) is a traditional Vietnamese children's board game, primarily played by girls. This game is valuable for enhancing calculating ability.

Board, pieces, and players

History

The game's origin is still a mystery to the Vietnamese people, as it has been played for many years. Many people say that Vietnamese ancestors were inspired by green rice fields to invent a game that could be played in those huge fields. At first, the game had become quite popular throughout the country. However, as time passed Vietnamese children no longer had the same passion for the game like those in the past. For this reason, the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology is exhibiting the game with fully explained instructions with the aim of keeping the game alive among children nowadays.

According to many researchers, Ô Ăn Quan belongs to Mancala.

Rules

Setup

Each player places one big stone or ten small stones (called the "Mandarin piece") in the Mandarin square as well as five small stones (called "citizen pieces") in each of the rice field squares.

Object

The game ends when all the pieces are captured.

If both Mandarin pieces are captured, the remaining citizen pieces belong to the player controlling the side that these pieces are on. There is a Vietnamese saying to express this situation: "hết quan, tàn dân, thu quân, bán ruộng" (literally: "Mandarin is gone, citizen dismisses, take back the army, selling the rice field") or "hết quan, tàn dân, thu quân, kéo về" (literally: "Mandarin is gone, citizen dismisses, take back the army, retreat")

Whichever player has more pieces is the winner (a Mandarin piece is equal to ten or five citizen pieces).

Scattering

Players play rock paper scissors to determine the first player.

The first player takes up all the pieces of any rice field square on his/her side of the board and distributes (Vietnamese: rải: literally: scatter) one piece per square, starting at the next square in either direction. When all pieces are distributed, the player repeats by taking up the pieces of the following square and distributing them.

If his/her side of the board is empty, he/she must use five previously-won pieces to place one piece in each square on his/her side before repeating the distribution. (If he/she do not possess any pieces, he/she must borrow a piece from the other player and return it when counting the points at the end of the game.)

Capturing

When the next square to be distributed is empty, the player wins all the pieces in the square after that. A square that contains a lot of pieces is the nhà giàu square (literally: rich square).

When the next square is an empty Mandarin square, or the next two squares are empty, it becomes the other player's turn.

In some game variations, the Mandarin square can contain little citizen pieces called quan non (literally: quan: Madarin, non: young/unripen) which may not be captured.

Song

The children song (Vietnamese: đồng dao) is used when playing this game:

Hàng trầu hàng cau The betel stall, the areca nut stall
Là hàng con gái Be stalls of girls
Hàng bánh hàng trái The cake stall, the fruit stall
Là hàng bà già Be stalls of old women
Hàng hương hàng hoa The incense stall, the flower stall
Là hàng cúng Phật. Be stalls for offering the Buddha.

In science

In literature

Variant

A variation of this game exists for three or four players.

See also

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, April 12, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.