In Taiwan, you will often see the famous snack Guai Guai (乖乖) placed around crucial devices. You can see it on servers, computers, ATMs, lab equipments and some have even been seen on concert equipments – just to ensure everything goes smoothly. It looks like AMD is also playing it safe, as Dr Lisa Su, the CEO of the company was seen with a branded Guai Guai bag with her caricature on it during a meeting held in Taiwan. AMD may want to ensure that its Ryzen products will run smoothly during testing and even in the hands of its customers.
The rough translation of Guai Guai or Kuai Kuai means “well behave” or “be obedient” so it is hoped that placing the snacks around servers and testing equipment will ensure that the devices will run smoothly. Now you can buy your own AMD-branded Guai Guai as the product is available in convenience stores across Taiwan.
Established in 1968, the snack was created by the Kuai Kuai Company Limited and sold the snack initially to children. This changed when a IT graduate student working on his thesis used the snack as a talisman to stop his PC from crashing. It worked for the student, and the rest is history.
The snack has since then been used as a good luck talisman of sorts. The Taiwanese tech sector sees these bags as an amulet to ensure that their machines run smoothly without any hiccups. You can see them not only in tech-related locations but also in labs, banks and even hospitals around the island. There’s even a name for the usage of the snack in popular culture in Taiwan – Kuai Kuai Culture.
Brands are also not averse to show that they employ Guai Guai to help them with their products. Framework Computer recently shared an X post showing a Guai Guai packet on one of their testing devices.
As a rule, only the green bag is used for amulet purposes – there are two other colours (red/yellow) but those are not used due to the significance of the colours with red being alarm, and yellow being caution. Only green is used because the green colour is said to ensure your machinery will always be running with a green light. Everyone changes the bag during the bag’s expiry date – usually once during the start of the Lunar New Year and the other during the Ghost Festival in July.
Otherwise, it is said, the magic will not work and the bag will just be a normal coconut-flavoured corn snack.
[SOURCE]
