리틀팍스

 Gong-gi is a traditional Korean play, consisted with five small Gong-gi stone. It is said that people used to play Gong-gi with real nature stones a long time ago, but nowadays people use plastic stones. The colors are various, which makes the play more fun. Today, I'm going to tell you how to play Gong-gi. 

 Gong-gi have five stages. When you fail one stage, you do the stage again. 

 The first three stages start with the same thing: spread all five stones on the ground, leaving four stones on the ground. At the first stage, the stones should be spread with enough space between each stones. Then, you pick up one stone in your hand. You throw the stone in the air, short enough to catch again. While the stone is still in midair, you pick up one stone on the ground, and rapidly catch the stone you just threw. If you did this right, you have two stones in one of your hands. Then, you continue this four times until no stones are on the ground, but on your hand. But from the second move, you throw one stone in your hand, and it works for all first three stages. When you're doing this for the first time, you can remove the stones from your hand to make it easier. 

 At the second stage, you spread the stones on the ground again. This time, you need to adjust the strength properly in order to progress the stage without difficulty. Because here, you pick up one stone from the ground too, but you need to grab two stones at once. You throw your stone in the air, grab two stones, and catch the stone you threw. This stage also ends in the way from the first stage. Sometimes, the gap between the two stones you need to grab can be big, so you need to grab the stone that's far away from any other stones. But if it doesn't work like that, you need to sweep two stones from the ground.

 The third stage progresses similar to the other stages. You throw the stone in the air, grab three stones at once, then catch the stone you threw. That lives one stone on the ground, so you do the same thing with that too.

 The fourth stage is slightly different from the first three stages, and it's tricky. You don't spread the stones. Instead, you start with all five stones in your hand. You need to throw one stone into the air from your hand, put four stones on the ground, and catch the one stone you just threw. Putting the four stones neatly in one small pile is important, because next, you throw the stone in you hand again, grab the four stones, then catch the stone in the midair again. This might sound difficult, and it is, but as you keep playing, your skill will improve enough to get used to it. 

 The final fifth stage is completely different from previous stages. You put all five stones on your palm, neat and nice. Then, you throw all five stones in the air, and put as many stones as you can on the other side of your hand. You might get five, or one. But it doesn't matter; because the next move is to grap the stone or stones again, but not in just in the way you like. You have to hook up the stone or stones with your palm. Someone will allow you  to catch it stably with just flipping your stones into your palm, but most won't. The number of the stones you caught is your age. For example, if you caught three stones, you are three years old. You have to do all the five stages all over again to gain more age. When you play Gong-gi with more than two people, you decide the winning age(usually 30, 50, or 100), then the person who reaches the age first wins.

 The ways I told you to play Gong-gi is the same with everyone, but the small rules can be different by the area or the person. For example, in some areas, you can shift the shape of the stones on your opposite-palm at the fifth stage, but in some areas, you can't. And in some areas, you can start the third stage with grabbing one stone first, but in some areas, you must grab three stones first.

 As you just learned, Gong-gi is quite complicated and hard, but it is very fun, because you don't know how the stones will be spread, and it's unexpectable. I hope you can get interest in Gong-gi after reading this essay, and keep playing to descent this traditional play to the next generation.