Gaming Rounds the World: The Worldwide Circulation of Chinese Gambling Games in the Long 20th Century

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

As sugar, coffee, tea that world historians have studied, gaming goes around the world. The import into China of gambling games like horse races, poker, and roulette during the Late Qing and Republican period is a well-known fact. But during the same period, many Chinese games took the reverse direction and made their way to other countries all over the world.
This panel aims at highlighting the multiple and far-reaching consequences of such a circulation.
Li’s paper focuses on the impact of gambling games among the Chinese diaspora. They were not only socially destructive, as they were instrumental in reinforcing the cohesiveness of the Chinese overseas communities and in maintaining connections to the homeland.
Kang deals with the case of lotteries in Korea. She argues that Overseas Chinese circulated not only merchandise but also a gambling culture through their powerful transnational network.
Paulès takes the example of fantan to investigate the spread of Chinese games outside the diaspora in different places: why did the local people in some countries emulate the Chinese and took up this game, while in other cases they refrained to do so ?
Heinz leads us to the very last end of the dissemination of Chinese games. She shows how mahjong was appropriated in the USA by another minority (Jews) and was instrumental in creating a modern Jewish American culture.
Games are a window to local, national, and transnational networks of identities and migration.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Xavier Paules, EHESS

Chair

• Xavier Paules, EHESS

Individual Presentations

• Performing Chineseness: Gambling and the Non-Linguistic Connectivity in Overseas Chinese Communities - En Li, Washington University in St. Louis

• Chinese Lottery Business and Korea, 1898-1909: Cantonese Company Tongshuntai and the East Asian Trade Network - Jin A Kang, Hanyang University

• The Dissemination of the Gambling Game of fantan 番攤 by the Cantonese Diaspora, 1850-1950 - Xavier Paules, EHESS

• American Mahjong: Jewish Women, a Chinese Game and Modern American Culture - Annelise Heinz, University of Texas at Dallas

Discussant

• Matthew Mosca, University of Washington