China has more online gamers than anywhere on earth – not to mention more internet addicts – but recently an entirely healthier gaming trend has gone viral in China: the board game café, where young Chinese can take an internet break over the Monopoly board.
“Online games are not healthy. They are bad for your eyes,” says Wang Yuxin, 22, as he watches friends play a game of Killers of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguosha), China’s most popular board game.
With his distinctive orange-striped glasses’ frames, Mr Wang clearly is an early adopter of fashion trends: the latest fad for his age group is spending hours bent over a piece of cardboard or a stack of playing cards in one of Shanghai’s ubiquitous board game cafés.