This Board Game Uses Vampires To Fight Anti-Asian Racism
This Board Game Uses Vampires To Fight Anti-Asian Racism
By Jeremy Blum
May 6, 2021
Summary
Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall, a new role-playing game by Banana Chan and Sen-Foong Lim, tackles racism, history and mythology all at once.
Restaurant maintenance mashed with vampire slaying might sound like the unlikeliest combination in the world, but for game designers Banana Chan.
Players develop characters, roll dice along a board reminiscent of a restaurant table and collaborate on a shared story - a process that's similar to a game like Dungeons & Dragons.
By day, they'll have to face the racism and economic travails that many Chinese immigrants of the Roaring '20s encountered, and at night, they'll battle jiangshi, the hopping vampires of Chinese legend whose name in Mandarin literally means "Stiff corpse."
"I have trouble sleeping just because I hope that nothing in this game is going to impact how people treat Asian Americans or make them think all Asian Americans are just like the characters portrayed in this game," Chan said.
Lim agreed, adding that a major concern while developing Jiangshi was that the game would simply "Open up people to play Asians as stereotypes and tropes."
One of the earliest and most famous instances was the 1985 Dungeons & Dragons book "Oriental Adventures," which offered rules for playing a ninja and samurai in the fantasy game and has long been criticized as presenting a stereotypical, one-dimensional picture of Asians.
The game asks players to develop hopes and dreams for their characters to exemplify this overarching intergenerational narrative.
Both have felt a lack of encouragement for their side careers in game design, with Chan saying that her parents urge her to not quit her day job and "Don't really understand that I'm making money off of games." Lim doesn't share game news with his "Very old-school traditional Chinese" parents at all.
Above all, Chan and Lim want their game to resonate with everyone - regardless of ethnicity or vampire hunting skills - and offer an understanding of how countries like the U.S. and Canada have always been powered by immigrants.
Reference
Blum, J. (2021, May 05). This board game Uses vampires to FIGHT Anti-Asian Racism. Retrieved August 03, 2021, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/board-game-anti-asian-racism-jiangshi_n_6068e496c5b68872efe7517a