Shanghai; an old Mexican game from my youth...

I was having a conversation today with a colleague from China.

Talking about how difficult it is sometimes to grasp American humor, when you are not actually born and raised in this country.

Nursery rhymes, for example, are something you have to experience as a toddler in the USA, otherwise, jokes based on Mother Goose references make no sense....

This is something I learned in my late twenties, and sometimes thereafter.

When my children were born and my wife, a US native, raised them, and I learned and filled these gaps as my children went trough their normal development phases.

So, in the course of this conversation, I mentioned a curious game I had learned as a child growing up in Mexico.

It is based loosely on baseball, except that there are only two bases, two players, no pitcher, and no ball...

The game is played with a broomstick, cut into two pieces: A long piece which becomes the bat, and a very short piece which becomes the ball...

The short piece is placed in a hole dug in the dirt, with one end sticking out. The bater hits the short stick with the long one, making it fly up straight into the air, and then swings at it on the way down. The other player has to catch the stick, or tag the bater on his way to first base or back home.

You get the picture...

I told him that, for some curious reason, this game was called Changai.

His eyes opened wide and he said:

I know this game! I used to play it in China as a kid!

So how in the world did this game, obviously named after a Chinese city end up in Mexico, 40 years ago?...

Who knows...


:shrug:

to work on the railroads in the 19th Century perhaps?

I didn't realize they were in Mexico also until I watched an old episode of Rick Bayless's Mexico: One Plate at a Time this past Sunday. He explored how Chinese cooking made it's way into Mexican cooking.

You see my conundrum?

:shrug:

Please don't say Ultra Cricket; no Hitchhiker references needed.

Serious question, not challenging.

They ruled Hong Kong for what 300 years? And they certainly traded with other port cities like Shanghai.

I think that there are plenty of clues pointing in that direction.

The last mayor of Casas Grandes was named Wong. The family has a restaurant in Viejo that serves the regular northern Mexico fare and Chinese as well. In the Pancho Villa museum in Chihuahua is on of his saddles that is labeled as being covered with human skin. Yeah you guessed it. I don't know if that is real or just rumor - the guy was pretty brutal.