Museum of Folk Culture

This guide to the Museum of Folk Culture in Hoi An centers on bai choi, the singing card game the old timber house was built to hold long before it became a museum. You'll hear how farmers guarding crops turned a bored night watch into verse and teasing, how the game traveled into the market towns of Quang Nam, and how a nineteenth-century Chinese shophouse called Hoang Hiep ended up housing it alongside silk looms and lantern frames. The guide follows the caller, or anh hieu, who draws each card from a drum and turns it into a joke about someone's love life rather than simply naming it. Listen for how the room reacts before the round even ends.