Sunday, May 11, 2008

Capitalism Comes to China

My friend from Beijing stayed with us a while back. He brought Monopoly--the China edition. I love the irony of the capitalist board game in a communist country. The only difference between the China edition and the regular one is that all the Atlantic City names are changed to Chinese cities. Plus they added a zero to all the prices and money (inflation).

Absent from the Chinese cities on the board are Taipei, Lhasa, Hong Kong, and Macau. But they did keep Urumqi on it. I was disappointed that Mao's face doesn't appear anywhere--nor does Deng Xiaoping.

We're trying to make the game more fun and thinking of ways to make it more Chinese (or at least communist). We'll do our best to rewrite the community chest and chance cards. We'll certainly begin our new rules with returning property to the bank after 70 rounds.

If you have suggestions for rules, let me know.

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