Edit: Thank you all for the answers!

I’ve been reading Mao since coming here and I saw this talking about gaming.

" Gaming. Where the peasant association is powerful, mahjong, dominoes and card games are completely banned.

The peasant association in the 14th District of Hsianghsiang burned two basketfuls of mahjong sets.

If you go to the countryside, you will find none of these games played; anyone who violates the ban is promptly and strictly punished. "

I guess my question is why would gaming be banned? I figured there is some cultural context that I’m missing because I would think especially during this time period it would be a way to bring people together during downtime.

(It should be noted that gambling was its own category)

Thank you for your time!

  • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    They’re listed separately in the source, although I still think there’s some missing historical context (probably a strong link between “gaming” and the other two activities banned, as has been said elsewhere in the thread).

    https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Report_on_an_Investigation_of_the_Peasant_Movement_in_Hunan#9._PEASANT_BANS_AND_PROHIBITIONS

    9. Peasant Bans and Prohibitions

    When the peasant associations, under Communist Party leadership, establish their authority in the countryside, the peasants begin to prohibit or restrict the things they dislike. Gaming, gambling and opium-smoking are the three things that are most strictly forbidden.

    Gaming. Where the peasant association is powerful, mahjong, dominoes and card games are completely banned.

    The peasant association in the 14th District of Hsianghsiang burned two basketfuls of mahjong sets.

    If you go to the countryside, you will find none of these games played; anyone who violates the ban is promptly and strictly punished.

    Gambling. Former hardened gamblers are now themselves suppressing gambling; this abuse, too, has been swept away in places where the peasant association is powerful.

    Opium-smoking. The prohibition is extremely strict. When the peasant association orders the surrender of opium pipes, no one dares to raise the least objection. In Liling County one of the evil gentry who did not surrender his pipes was arrested and paraded through the villages.

    The peasants’ campaign to "disarm the opium-smokers’! is no less impressive than the disarming of the troops of Wu Pei-fu and Sun Chuan-fang [27] by the Northern Expeditionary Army. Quite a number of venerable fathers of officers in the revolutionary army, old men who were opium-addicts and inseparable from their pipes, have been disarmed by the “emperors” (as the peasants are called derisively by the evil gentry). The “emperors” have banned not only the growing and smoking of opium, but also trafficking in it. A great deal of the opium transported from Kweichow to Kiangsi via the counties of Paoching, Hsianghsiang, Yuhsien and Liling has been intercepted on the way and burned. This has affected government revenues. As a result, out of consideration for the army’s need for funds in the Northern Expedition, the provincial peasant association ordered the associations at the lower levels “temporarily to postpone the ban on opium traffic”. This, however, has upset and displeased the peasants.

    • LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      I believe gaming is used more for when there’s a “skill” element in the mix that can have an impact on your performance - stuff like card and dice games. Gambling as a separate category is more of betting and lottery kind of thing.