Language Log

« previous post | next post »

It's a card game with a strange name.  "Throwing eggs"  is a shedding-type card game in which the players (2 pairs of 2 partners) try to get rid of all their cards before their opponents.

The characters in Guandan (掼蛋) literally mean "Throwing Eggs". The second character is a homophone of the character 弹, meaning bomb, which is also suggested as an origin for the game's name. An alternative name for the game is Huai'an Running Fast (淮安跑得快), referencing the city where the game originated.

(Wikipedia)

I've overheard card players in the West refer to decisive card plays as "throwing a bomb", so the name makes sense after all, if you think of "dan" metaphorically.

"‘Decadent and passive’: China cracks down on ‘throwing eggs’ card game:  Craze for the four-player game known as guandan may lead to the formation of cliques, Communist party warns", Helen Davidson and Chi-hui Lin in Taipei, The Guardian (Sat 24 Aug 2024)

—

As recently as last year, Chinese state media was hailing guandan as the card game that “can get you a promotion in China”.

The country was holding open tournaments, and workers were encouraged to use it as a social and professional networking tool.

Guandan, or “throwing eggs”, is a four-person, two-team game of strategy. It has been around for decades, beginning in Jiangsu province, and was a favoured pastime of former leader Deng Xiaoping.

But it has had a recent resurgence, with surveys suggesting there are about 140 million enthusiasts. In 2014, the municipal government in Jiangsu tried to have it designated as “intangible cultural heritage”, and it featured in the 2023 spring festival gala – the annual lunar new year television special.

But now it appears to have fallen out of favour with the highly interventionist ruling Communist party – being blamed for encouraging a “passive attitude” towards work, and encouraging the formation of cliques among party cadres.

A recent run of articles in the state-run Beijing Youth Daily described guandan as intoxicating and “decadent”, warning that it was “time to control the trend of ‘laying flat’ among all guandan players”. Laying flat (tangping in Chinese) is the term given to a social trend among young people who are rejecting high-pressure jobs for an easier lifestyle, which has alarmed authorities.

In a country where people's work and productivity are prized above all by CCP officials, any sign of slacking off sets off government alarm bells — especially if they are linked to social groups that are beyond the direct control of the party.

The crackdown on guandan is not proving very popular among users. The Beijing Guandan Club posted a furious defence online, asking “where this evil wind came from?”.

It said “circle culture” flourished in China no matter the sport, pointing at previous crazes among business executives and officials for badminton and golf. “According to the logic of those who criticise the game of throwing eggs, should badminton, table tennis, bridge, golf and other sports also be criticised? Should they also be banned?”

Some online comments suggested the furore over guandan may instead encourage more people to play. One wrote: “What the state resists is what the people support.”

The CCP criticism (after once encouraging the game for promoting social cohesion, as it once encouraged Falun Gong) is that playing cards is too much like ‘lying flat’, copping out of the high pressure employment rat-race.

I remember clearly how successful Fǎlún Gōng 法輪功 ("Dharma Wheel Practice") became after its emergence in the early 1990s.  Falun Gong was a type of spiritual and physical cultivation that, by the mid-90s, was subscribed to by tens of millions of believers who met in parks and other public spaces to do carefully designed physical and meditational exercises. My wife enthusiastically participated in these public Falun Gong sessions for several years whenever we would go to China.  It was obvious that the exercises were beneficial to the practitioners, and even the government agreed to the extent that the army publishers printed their written materials.  By the latter part of the 90s, however, the government became frightened because so many people were joining up that they could no longer keep the groups under complete control.  By the late 1990s, the government started to harass Falun Gong adherents, and, in April, 1999, a brutal government crackdown began, to the point that now half of China's labor camp population consists of Falun Gong practitioners, and the latter are also the favorite target of government sanctioned organ harvesting (see here and here)

I doubt that the CCP attack on the egg throwers will ever come to such a pass, because the latter are not so well organized as Falun Gong, nor do they have a spiritual, ideological basis as do the Falun Gong adherents.  Still, egg throwers should keep their heads low until the government dissatisfaction blows over.

 

Selected readings

• "The growing supinity of Chinese youth" (7/11/23)
• "'Lying flat' and 'Involution': passive-aggressive resistance" (6/4/21)
• "'Lying flat' and 'Buddha whatever' (part 2)" (6/24/21)
• "Kong Yiji ('Confucius ABC'), another self-deprecating meme for young Chinese" (3/31/23)
• "WU2WEI2: Do Nothing" (3/10/09)
• "Blindly busy" (8/26/18)
• "'Involution', 'working man', and 'Versailles literature': memes of embitterment" (12/23/20)
• "Involution, part 2" (12/25/20)
• "'Farcical names'" (4/3/15) — "Hébì 何必?" ("Why bother?)
• "Roll out of here like an egg, Xi" (4/9/20)
• "'Either… or…'" (4/9/16)
• "Bad Egg" (4/5/11)
• "Roll out of here, Mubarak" (4/3/11)
• "Fennel fry stupid eggs " (4/9/13)

[Thanks to AntC]

August 27, 2024 @ 6:57 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Etymology, Language and entertainment, Language and politics

Permalink