There was a rudimentary compound next to the public toilet in the center of the village, which looked like no one from the outside during the day, but after dark, the two red iron doors were tightly closed, as if to seal the light leaking from the small windows under the eaves of the large house in the hospital, and the strange hysterical screams that arose in the house.

Two dazzling incandescent lamps hung from the ceiling, and under the lamps were six large square tables, three of which were good mahjong, two of which were stacked with pai gow, and one was full of poker. Eighty or so people gathered in six irregular circles, flowing around the six tables. The people in this room, filled with nicotine smoke and the buzzing sound of flies, some stood in the outer circle and watched hesitantly, some crowded close to the edge of the table to watch the situation on the table and anxiously waited to play, and these two groups of people were surrounded not only by the table, but also by the guys who sat on the benches by the table and fiddled with the cards in their hands excitedly, their red eyes glancing between the cards and the stacks of bills in the center of the table, hoping that a card would be played out and a dozen dollars would be gathered in front of them.

Welcome to the underground casino in Dayangtun Village, the village's largest and most prosperous nighttime entertainment venue.

Older people in Dayangtun have little contact with the various forms of entertainment that have emerged in the city since the 21st century, and as for the Internet café that has been open for seven or eight years, only a few young people like to go there. In this mountain village, where there are many old-fashioned lifestyles, most of the middle-aged men who remain are not bound by heavy housework and mischievous children like women, so the only way for them to pass their free time is to gather together to play cards and play all kinds of cards. In the past, the people in the village did not play cards in one place, but several familiar families got together, set up a card table outside the courtyard of a certain house, made tea and smoked, and chatted and played. At dusk, the card tables distributed along the courtyard wall of the road have almost become the cultural landscape of the village, and it is particularly lively on the eve of the Spring Festival. However, about 10 years ago, the local police station stepped up its efforts to crack down on "pornography, gambling and drugs", and for several years in a row, when the villagers were at their most prosperous a few days before the Chinese New Year's Eve, the police in charge of the area were all dispatched to the village to investigate and deal with gambling. Because the villagers will bet some money on the card table in order to play cards more excitingly, or 10 yuan per person, or 50 yuan, or more than one or two hundred yuan, the police can easily copy a lot of "gambling" now. They then confiscated the "gambling money" and imposed fines on those involved in the "gambling". As a result, the card tables in the village are becoming scarcer and scarcer, but the desire for cards in the hearts of the gentlemen is getting stronger and stronger.

Later, Chang Jinzhu, secretary of the village party committee, privately proposed to some village officials and staff that the compound left behind by his childless cousin next to the public toilet after the death of his childless cousin should be simply renovated and turned into a "chess and card room for the whole village to participate in cultural activities." In this way, the walls of the compound were heightened and a solid iron gate was installed, and broken glass was glued to the walls. The original window holes in the big house, which was used as a "chess and card room", were blocked with bricks and cement, and only two rectangular windows were opened on the north and south walls near the eaves for ventilation. This "chess and card room" has not hung signboards, nor has it posted similar red letters or firecrackers. The villagers learned about the news of Chang Xiaoshan, who was in charge of cultural work at the time, through the radio of the opening of the door to welcome the villagers.

The "chess and card room" opened by the secretary to enrich everyone's life is of course full of people. It didn't take long for the villagers who often went in and out of the "chess and card room" to find that a few people often occupied a table in the corner of the house after dinner, shouting at each other to put 100 or 50 tickets to the side of the mahjong tiles, and they were making a lot of noise until after 11 o'clock in the evening. Clear-eyed people can see that this is really gambling, remembering the situation of being "caught gambling" by the police in the village before, everyone naturally has palpitations, and they have to hide away from the table. After a long time, those people still shouted and put a lot of money on the table, and they never saw the police come to sweep the gambling. Someone quietly asked Wang Shunyang, who was in charge of the "chess and card room" at that time: "Are you not afraid of making trouble like this?" Wang Shunyang said nonchalantly: "It doesn't matter, there is not much money." It's a small gamble. Seeing the people who won the money carrying a bag of tickets and leaving, the village men with meager income and monotonous tastes itched in their hearts, and someone couldn't help but join the gambling game of the gang, and then at other tables, people also gambled.

In fact, the person who first gambled in the corner was Chang Jinzhu's childcare who secretly spent money to buy. Chang Jinzhu gave them some money and told them to gamble in the "chess and card room", and told them to "rest assured" that he had greeted the "number one person in charge of public order in the town" and that no one would come to arrest them. "I'll play like this for a month, and when you're almost done with it, I'll give you some more comfort. More than a month later, when these people "had enough", the old men of Dayangtun were addicted to gambling, and what "pleasant and pleasant" was also left behind by them, and "taking a handful" was the fundamental purpose and harvest. In the end, this entertainment venue, which has never been lit up with a "chess and card room" plaque, has finally officially become a casino in Dayangtun Village.

Although the casino is no longer under Wang Shunyang's control, many of the rules he made at the beginning are still retained, such as everyone must buy a two-yuan ticket when entering the casino, each gambling game must set the upper limit of the gambling book for gamblers, and everyone who wins must take a cut of the winning money to honor the casino, etc. These rules not only ensure the profitability of the casino owners, but also keep the villagers interested and expected the casino in the long run. However, gambling establishments are not recognized and protected by the law after all, so the casino has not been registered in any name, and its operators have adopted the method of "sunrise and rest, daily income" for many years, and the villagers who come to gamble are also tacitly aware of this. When night falls, the humble compound comes alive, and its climax often comes at midnight.

Tonight seems to be no exception, the iron gate of the courtyard is still closed, and if someone wants to gamble, they must knock on the door first. The door asked who was doing what, and the person who knocked on the door reported his name and echoed "came to play chess with Brother Chang". There was a rectangular opening on the door one meter five from the ground, covered with an iron plate that could be pushed and pulled, and after listening to this answer, the person in the door pulled open the iron plate to make sure that there was no problem, and then opened the door and let the person in. The men who guarded the gate of the compound were all sixteen or seventeen-year-old boys, and tonight they were two yellow-haired, one dyed all over the golden, and the other with half of his head. They look around absent-mindedly as they do in any kind of work, and they twist and wriggle in boredom, and they beat their hearts like waves of unprovoked boredom, and the way to vent this emotion is by humming pop songs, talking about fashionable topics, and smoking.