On June 9th about 30-40 students from Parsons and Tsinghua played the HouHai’d ‘n’ Seek urban game we’ve been working on with Leanne. Gaming lasted anywhere from a couple hours to the roaming raging of team “BU YAO” who played until well after midnight. This added a new dimension to many of the challenges, which were planned to be played mostly in daylight, but haunting Beijing hutongs at night is always good fun.

[Download the HouHai’d ‘n’ Seek map and guide to exploring Beijing and “learning more about Beijing culture”.]

Challenge hosts Uncle Ke and Auntie Li taught students how to wrap Beijing-style dumplings, which seemed to cause surprise and/or envy among other neighbours who were surprised to see the “deaf mutes” engaging in such a lively, social activity. Big brother Gao came by to critique everyone’s dumplings (“That’s good, but today we’re making dumplings, not buns. Try again.”) and give a long, carousing account of his reasons why one should not do drugs but how smoking cigarrettes and drinking alcohol are a necessary and integral part of Beijing 老百姓 laobaixing (common people) life.

After the game, Parsons Design & Technology student Robyn Girard popped by to chat with Uncle Ke and Auntie Li, and where we were wondering about the logistics of translation, they ended up barely needing translation help at all. Robyn cannot hear either, and although Chinese sign language is different from English sign language, there was enough intersection and the know-how of reading gestures to maintain a two-hour long conversation about signing and life in Beijing versus New York.

Amidst busy hands though, the freshly made dumplings got cold…

(Big thank yous to Uncle Ke and Auntie Li, Alessandro, and Robyn and her translator! This project was created by Leanne Wagner and Qu Yizhen, Ouyang Xiao and Elaine W. Ho at HomeShop.)