According to The Guardian’s story, the word “guandan” means “throwing eggs,” but Google Translate either disagrees or doesn’t want to play.
The Chinese Communist Party, previously enthusiastic about the four-player card game, now says that guandan unhealthily encourages passivity and cliques. I guess the tightly knit Borg-CCP hive-mind elite is opposed to cliques (“ ‘Decadent and passive’: China cracks down on ‘throwing eggs’ card game,” August 24, 2024).
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.
One recently circulated photo from a Chinese workplace revealed a “report form for personal self-examination by party members”, asking people for details on guandan players in their workplace, and any cliques that might be forming.
On Monday, a government body in Henan province published an editorial saying there was nothing wrong with playing guandan per se, but that there were unhealthy trends and a culture of cliqueyness surrounding it.
“What needs to be criticised is not the guandan game itself, but the fact that public officials use throwing eggs as a medium to form a long-term, fixed ‘guandan circle’,” it said.
“Like golf circles, food and drink circles, etc., guandan also provides a breeding ground for circle culture…. If circle culture becomes popular, it will erode the cornerstone of social fairness and justice, and harm the vital interests of the general public.”
The article said curtailing the development of cliques required the strict supervision of senior figures and severe punishment of those creating “small circles” for their own “maximum interests”.
“Circle culture” is, what, having interactions with others outside of CCP work sessions and CCP study sessions? It sounds as if, in addition to not wanting people to forego pressure-cooker jobs, the CCP doesn’t want any kind of social networks forming independently of itself, the Chinese Communist Party. Which to whatever extent this is true is all the more reason to play.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has overseen a huge anti-corruption campaign across the Chinese Communist party, with millions of officials investigated or punished. Activities such as golf are severely frowned upon. Outside the party, authorities have targeted online fan groups, excessive gaming, and social trends that promote wealth or excess.
That word “corruption” as used by the CCP, corrupt to the core, is tricky, seeming in practice to mean any kind of getting on the Party’s bad side and in particular Xi Jinping’s bad side.
The Beijing Guandan Club is not open to the criticisms of its game, noting that fears of the consequences of play apply equally to “badminton, table tennis, bridge, golf and other sports…. Should they also be banned?”
Careful, Beijing Guandan Club. It’s a bit dangerous to point out this kind of reductio ad absurdum in China. It’s a totalitarian state over there.
One of the online commenters on the controversy has a good thought: “What the state resists is what the people support.” Let’s hope that’s true.
