The game of keno, which has the features of Bingo and any lottery, is nowadays popular all over the world. Keno was introduced in China by its head of state more than 2000 years ago. Still the origins of the game are really a bit of a mystery. Several different versions exist.
According to one assumption the game was invented during a war in China in order to supply the army with money. The citizens refused to contribute additional funds to the fruitless cause of the war. So Cheung was left scratching his head as to how to generate the necessary finances to continue his brutal battles. Finally, Cheung had the brilliant idea of creating a game that would appeal to the huge numbers of people under his command, while simultaneously generating a bit of cash to cover his expenses. Keno was so successful that it can be said to be the reason for Cheung's victory. It is also credited for providing resources and helping to fund the massive undertaking of building the Great Wall! Later keno was known as the White Pigeon game as people of surrounding villages were informed of the winning numbers by carrier pigeons.
At first Chinese classic characters instead of numbers were printed on the keno boards. If at first the game included 120 characters, this number dropped to 80 in the course of time.
Keno appeared in the US in the 19th century as a lot of Chinese people came there to work on the railroads. Though the game was considered illegal, the new Chinese immigrants still played it. It continued to use Chinese characters and thus obviously didn't enter popular mainstream American culture until it was modified to include the numerical system.

 

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