Mahjong and talking pigs – unusual coronavirus challenges facing Chinese authorities
- People have continued to gather to play mahjong despite instructions aimed at preventing the spread of the virus among crowds
- Police have acted to try to stamp out rumours about the outbreak
To contain the spread of the virus, Chinese authorities have locked down Hubei province, which has about 60 million residents. Throughout the country, the public has been discouraged from going outside or attending gatherings. Several cities have introduced rules such as compulsory wearing of masks at all times in public spaces.
However, not everyone has been following the rules.
Mahjong is a popular card-like game played with tiles and each game requires four people. Police in cities in least three provinces have had to break up mahjong parlours and confiscate tiles from residents in the past two weeks, according to media reports.
On Thursday, the health commission in the eastern province of Zhejiang said a county in Quzhou had recorded locally transmitted cases linked to playing mahjong. As a result, officials from Jiuhua county confiscated more than 600 mahjong tiles from residents, removing selected tiles from each set.
“In rural places, it’s normal to play mahjong over Lunar New Year,” county official Zheng Shihua said in a report by online platform Pear Video. “But we’ve been telling them to stop. Some listened and some didn’t. There are always a couple of households that hide from us.”