Travel: Liar’s Dice

Liar's dice is a deceptively honest game. It's a popular sport in Chinese bars, along with karaoke and pointed observations about the waning American empire. While the base game is typically played with dice and cups, a more complicated version can be attempted by drunk texting that one ex after 1:30 AM.

We took a while to develop a strategy for it. When the punishments for losing were the only cold beers in Nanjing, failure was more of a shortcut than anything else.

This wasn't to say that we lacked test subjects. We were foreigners in an ethnically homogenous city, a novelty. So, we had fans—or at least observers. Perpetually damp middle-aged men, plenty of that ambiguously European swank, were desperate to molt out of their salaried exoskeletons. Acclimated to the smokey air both indoors and out. Photosynthetic to the cheap strobes.

The meta-strategy for the game is simple: never look at your dice. You can't lie if you don't know what the truth is. You can't be caught in a false reality if there isn't a real one.

Most of our opponents found that funny. They'd order another round, taking the entirely wrong lesson from both the game and the gloom that informed it.

Music too loud to actually hear. Cheap cigarette smoke turned every evening into an interactive fire safety review. The unmistakable smell of bachelor cologne.

'I like your style!' one older gentleman said while underwriting our evening's festivities. He was either bad at lying or never felt the need to. Both were unpleasant thoughts.

He later, while drunk, tried to run us over with a motorbike.

I prefer his earlier critical work.

We managed to break the game once. There wasn't a newcomer, so none of us looked at our dice. No bets. No bluffs to call.

So we just sat there. Nobody dared make the moment real by checking.

There's freedom in that honesty.

I hope we can experience it again someday.