The Tibetan pronunciation ‘Tige’ means the knee bone of the sheep. The name may vary from place to place. In the pastoral areas, Tiges are favorite toys of the children. They are ordinary because they are from the herds. But since each sheep has only two Tiges and the sheep slaughtering seasons are generally in winter, so they are not available out of the season.

    Why have the children chosen Tiges as their toys? To get the answer, we may look back at ancient times, when they were used for soothsaying, so they have been considered as not like ordinary bones. The Tige has six facets, with each being named after that respectively six different species of animals, such as, the roc, mastiff, horse, donkey, sheep and goat, and with their status from high to low, roc is of highest status, while the goat is the lowest. The prevailing way of playing is to throw them in the air and see which facet is up when they land. The player, whose Tige with face-up facet representing the animal with the higher status that of the others will win.

    There are also several other ways, e. g. one on one fighting: gather the Tiges belonging to all the players and throw them in the air, then the players who get the same animals will fight one on one. That is to flip the Tige to shooting against the opponent’s one, and if a player successfully targets, he will win a Tige. Another way is to agree on a facet at first, then two sides will throw the same quantity of Tiges into the air to see which side has more identical facets face-up after landing, and who will win all the Tiges on the field. A variation of this is to mark a Tige as the head Tige, then the players will throw the Tiges belonging to all the players together with the head Tige in turn, the thrower will in all the Tiges which have the same face-up facet as that of the head one. Any way, the new patterns are continuously invented by the children during play.

    The children are as fond of the Tiges as of the game. They will try all the ways to collect them; sometime they even injure the sheep of their own home. Of course, they will do this behind their parents’ backs. Otherwise they will be given a sound beating. More occasionally, they will seek to win them from the other children. For this purpose, they will even play some tricks. For example, if they wish to get the horse facet faced up, then they will dig a hole on the opposite facet, and infill some molten lead and seal it up, and just wait to be the big winner. The most favorite Tiges are those from the wild rams, which run frequently on the wild land, hence have very developed knee bones, wide and flat, offering more chance to get the horse facet faced up. In addition, the children usually coat their Tiges with different colors, showing their cherishing on one land, and making a differentiation from the others on the other hand.

    Just in brief, in the vast pastoral areas, this is the children’s game as well as every one’s game when they were young. It brings endless joy to the children as well as the endless memories to the grown-ups. In Tibet, people have such a colorful recreation life nowadays. Besides the above-mentioned kinds, the other kinds from the other ethnicities are also introduced and played by almost everyone, such as cards and the mahjong, especially the latter, which has become very fashionable in recent years. Singing and dancing are also played beyond the traditional limit. The youngsters in the cities prefer to sing pop-songs and dance the disco.