LUCKY STREAK

 

Lucky Streak, acrylic on canvas, 2024. 20" X 20"

The artist welcomes the Year of the Dragon with this painting depicting four young dragons playing a game of mahjong.

The black dragon appears to have achieved a winning deck by drawing a 發財 "fa cai" (green dragon) tile, much to the shock of the white dragon sitting in its opposite direction, probably during a lucky streak. It implies a popular case of 食糊 ("sik wu": winning off another player's discard), where the white dragon may have discarded the "fa cai" tile before it was drawn by the black dragon. The deck shown on the black dragon's side is shown to be "All in Triplets", where in the Hong Kong mahjong scoring rules, the player gets mostly combinations of 3 or 4 identical tile sets (碰 pung for 3 tiles, 杠 kong for 4). The dragons' winnings are shown as gold coins stored in money pots.

The artist intended for the black dragon to achieve the winning deck as the black color in Chinese culture is actually the color of wealth, purity, wisdom and respect, and also symbolizes the element of water. The painting also reflects the exciting atmosphere during the Chinese New Year, especially when some people gather to play mahjong.

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