Hopscotch: How a Few Lines on the Ground Became a Game

For many people born in China in the 1960s and growing up through the late 1960s and 1970s, hopscotch was a game that needed almost no purchased equipment. A patch of concrete or level ground, a few lines drawn with chalk, brick or a stick, and a flat piece of tile or stone were enough. The China Sports Museum also records that the game was widespread from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The number and arrangement of the squares varied by place. Some layouts resembled an aeroplane; others were simply a sequence of boxes. Play usually involved throwing a marker, hopping on one or two feet and avoiding the boundary lines. What made the game work was that the children had to agree on what counted as a boundary, what counted as a fault and where the next turn should resume. The rules were not read from a manual; they were confirmed while playing.

That reveals something characteristic about childhood play under the material conditions of the period — very little equipment, but a great deal of interaction. The lines on the ground had almost no value by themselves. The game existed because a group of children accepted and maintained the same rules.

https://www.olympic.cn/museum/news/benguan/2020/0601/330962.html
https://tcmb.culture.tw/zh-tw/detail?id=627992&indexCode=Culture_Invisible