Guess-fingers is widely popular among the common people of Taiwan, played at wedding banquets, temple feasts or other festive occasions where people get together to drink and sing along. After work, laborers in the countryside head to a roadside stand or the night market, order some side dishes to help the drinks go down and play a round, heedless of those around them. Young people in the city prefer bizarrely decorated beer houses, where tipsy topers can be seen playing the game long into the wee hours.

Actually, guess-fingers comes in a variety of types. Besides the standard version, two other popular types are p'a-la-yen and Japanese style. Rare indeed is the male who's completed his military service and can't play any of them. In p'a-la-yen, the players call out rock, paper or scissors in Japanese, trying to guess which shape their opponent holds out. Japanese-style guess-fingers is a relic of the Japanese occupation. Older people are its most faithful adherents.

Compared with the fiercely competitive versions above, Three Kingdoms and melody guess-fingers appeal through their charm. Before playing Three Kingdoms guess-fingers, a prelude is required--both players have to hum a nonsense verse. Then they try to guess the total number of fingers held out between them by using phrases referring to incidents from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms that involve numbers, such as "the three invitations to Chu-ko Liang" or "the seven captures of Meng Huo." People who aren't well versed in Chinese literature can't hack it. Melody guess-fingers is even more interesting: it's played along to graceful, lilting airs from Taiwanese opera, which does a lot to diminish the cutthroat tension in the air.

The appeal of eagle, crab and "ask-the-general" guess-fingers, on the other hand, lies in their movements.

Crab, oh crab, with eight long legs,

two big claws on either side,

stretch your head and scrunch your neck,

crawl your way across the sand.

Recited to lively gestures and expressions, that verse can make normally sedate and reserved Chinese look four sheets to the wind, which is probably just the point!

People who play guess-fingers often say it increases the effect of alcohol, so they can drink "more healthily." It's also the perfect solution for those awkward occasions when you find yourself drinking across from a person you really have nothing to say to. But the most exciting match ups, most would insist, are between evenly skilled old friends, onto each other's tricks, fighting it out to the finish.

Even though there's not much conversation when the game is on, just as in cards, you can still tell quite a bit about a person's character by the way they play.

Beer-house owner Yu Yueh-shu says people who play guess-fingers should maintain correct posture and speak loudly and clearly to release vital energy from the diaphragm. Clear-cut, precise gestures mean a person is open and aboveboard. A feeble voice puts you in the hole right at the start and implies weakness and trepidation.

Huang Kuang-kuo, a professor of psychology at National Taiwan University, affirms that people who like guess-fingers are usually affable and outgoing. "Guess-fingers is a social activity that brings interpersonal relations closer. Reserved or introverted people have a hard time handling it."

Wang I-chia, editor in chief of World Health Magazine, agrees that "gregarious people tend to like it more." In addition, most Chinese people have a low tolerance for alcohol and feel its effects quickly. Those who keep on drinking anyway are usually highly competitive types who don't like to admit defeat.

"People who play guess-fingers are usually frank, open and uninhibited," says Tzeng Yung-i, a professor of Chinese literature at National Taiwan University renowned for his way with a bottle. People worried about their image don't like making a spectacle of themselves, and that's why it's played more by workers or businessmen than by officials or academics.

In ancient times, the literati livened up drinking parties by playing chiu-ling, or drinkers' games, rather than guess-fingers.

According to Chang Yueh-yun, editor in chief of the National Palace Museum Monthly of Chinese Art, ancient Chinese drinking games began to develop at the end of the Han dynasty (206 B.C. to A.D. 220) and reached a peak of popularity during the Tang dynasty (618 to 907). Yu Tun-p'ei, a scholar of the Ch'ing dynasty (1644 to 1911), classified them into three types: ya-ling, shou-ling and t'ung-ling.

Ya-ling were literary drinking games played by the educated elite, which often required a knowledge of the Five Classics, with the philosophers and the histories thrown in for good measure. Shou-ling involved drawing slips of paper referring to popular fiction, drama or anecdotes of famous people and singing, reciting or performing based on the instructions. T'ung-ling included simpler games, such as dice throwing and guess-fingers, which were popular with women and the common people.

"Ya-ling games died out during the course of this century as Chinese people became less and less familiar with the classics," Professor Huang says, and guess-fingers, the easiest type of t'ung-ling, won out as the sole survivor.

Compared with ya-ling, which requires rhyming and antithesis, guess-fingers is verbally simple but demanding in intuition and reflexes--no one can be certain of winning all the time.

On Chihan in the Pescadores, there's a man in his seventies called Uncle Six who's said to be undefeated on the entire island. No matter what his opponent does, he always calls six. He has beaten everyone who has challenged him, and his reputation has spread far and wide.

"Actually, his secret's not hard to fathom," says Lai Cheng-hung, who works at a computer company. Based on probability statistics, the totals four or six have the greatest odds of coming up (calling the number five is against the rules), and so calling six all the time makes sense.

"Good players usually have quick reflexes," says Lin Wen-cheng, who works at an advertising firm and often sees the game played at business lunches and dinners. Victory or defeat lies in a split second, in determining the opponent's habitual reactions.

For purposes of fairness, guess-fingers has a few basic no-no's, punishable by stiff fines (deep quaffs), such as trying to change the throw halfway through or failing to call a number. One of the most common violations, which often plagues novices or those far gone in their cups, is holding out one finger and calling out seven or more or holding out five fingers and calling out four or less.

Despite its millennia-long history, orthodox guess-fingers is also gradually declining in popularity in modern society, withdrawing from fancy dinners and banquets to noisy bars and roadside stands. Difficult versions like Three Kingdoms and melody guess-fingers are played by relatively few.

"It's all related to changes in society and our way of life," says Meng Mou, a columnist at the China Times. In the agricultural society of the past, guess-fingers bore a quasi-ritualistic function as a channel of social interaction. But in today's society, the rise of Western-style bars with sexual overtones has changed the way drinking is viewed. In addition, modern urban spaces are crowded, and shouting out at the top of your lungs can only disturb others, so naturally much fewer people play it in public places.

Wang I-chia says that with universal education and Western influence, "people's leisure and recreational activities have have become more individually oriented," and so guess-fingers has been slowly losing its base of public support, a situation most apparent in the cities.

The situation is similar in Japan, where guess- fingers used to be played in wineshops and homes all across the country. But modern Japanese have become largely westernized, and guess-fingers has been gradually disappearing with changes in their drinking habits, according to Yoneyama Tsutomu, a Japanese translator at a magazine in Taipei. The most popular version now, featured as an illegal video game in Taiwan, is one in which the loser has to strip off a piece of clothing.

In Taiwan in recent years, a television variety show for teenagers called Lucky Draw has made several new types of guess-fingers highly popular with youngsters. Even three-year-olds can recite the words to one of them: "I change, I change, I change, change, change."

But the patrons of bars and drinking establishments cast a dim view on the new "alcohol-free" versions and refuse to learn them. "They're just for kids," they say with scorn.

A spokesman for the show's production company says that guess-fingers has always changed with the times, and the new styles they've added, like eagle guess-fingers, superman guess-fingers and zombie guess-fingers, are simply a natural development.

Through all its versions, guess-fingers displays its astonishing variety and capacity for change along with its strong appeal to the Chinese people. The only difference is the arena has changed, out of the bars and onto the playground.

(We wish to thank Lin Mao-hsien, executive secretary of the Folk Arts Foundation, for his help in preparing this article.)

[Picture Caption]

This is the most popular form of guess-fingers in Taiwan. The player who guessed the correct sum is the winner.

There were all kinds of drinking games in ancient China. Shown here are portions of a painting called "Drunken Immortals" by Yen Hui of the Yuan dynasty (1271 to 1368), which can give you an idea of the gestures involved in some of them.

With the gradual rise of individualism, drinking habits have changed and Western-style bars have become favorites with young people in Taiwan. (photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

Eagle guess-fingers is an interesting version of the game. Flapping your arms to the side means, "the eagle's on the wing"; crossing them in front of the chest means, "nothing doing."

In a favorite feature of the TV show "Lucky Draw," guest stars are asked to play guess- fingers with members of the studio audience. The version being played here is "deaf-mute" guess-fingers.

There were all kinds of drinking games in ancient China. Shown here are portions of a painting called "Drunken Immortals" by Yen Hui of the Yuan dynasty （1271 to 1368）, which can give you an idea of the gestures involved in some of them.

With the gradual rise of individualism, drinking habits have changed and Western-style bars have become favorites with young people in Taiwan. （photo by Huang Chung-hsin）

Eagle guess-fingers is an interesting version of the game. Flapping your arms to the side means, "the eagle's on the wing"; crossing them in front of the chest means, "nothing doing.".

In a favorite feature of the TV show "Lucky Draw," guest stars are asked to play guess- fingers with members of the studio audience. The version being played here is "deaf-mute" guess-fingers.