I recently took an interest in ancient Chinese pastimes most popular around the Ming Dynasty, as it's one of the interesting/innovative points in China's history. I've researched the topic myself before, but there are just so many activities that endured throughout ancient China's history that it's difficult to narrow down what (if anything) was unique to this specific period. Any information/feedback available (Sources are most appreciated) on popular sports, children's games, board games, family games, public events such as theatre, and general recreational activities is welcome. Thanks!
No professional Ming historian, but I do know of some card games then, so I did a little digging. Here's what I found.
Ma Diao Pai, 马吊牌 (Link is Chinese, but very detailed in playing styles and card types)
It's a kind of card game , played with 40 cards , each with some kind of unique patterns, according to the link above, some of them even have drawings of characters from 水浒传 (Shui Hu Zhuan).
This is definitely unique to Ming at that time because it was created during Ming Dynasty.
赌博万历之末，太平无事，士大夫无所用心，问有相从赌博者。至天启中，始行马吊之戏。
Source: 日知錄/卷28 - 维基文库，自由的图书馆 (wikisource.org) e-copy of book on wiki
Roughly translates to 'during late 万历 period (reign title of 明神宗 ), there was general peace and officials started to take interest in gambling, till mid 天启 period (reign title of 明神宗's grandson, 明熹宗) , 马吊之戏 (马吊牌) has started ( to be played) .'
Late 万历 is about 1600s-1620, 天启 is pretty short at 1620-1627 , so mid 天启 is prob just those few years in between.
万厯末年，民间好叶子戏，图赵宋时山东羣盗姓名于牌而鬬之，至崇祯时大盛
Source: 綏寇紀略 (四庫全書本)/卷12 - 维基文库，自由的图书馆 (wikisource.org) e-copy of book on wiki
This one has slight discrepancies, roughly translating to 'during late 万历 period, 叶子戏(another name for 马吊牌) is frequently played among the people, with patterns depicting Shandong outlaws during Song Dynasty (essentially, 水浒传 characters) on the card. It rose to popularity during the 崇祯 (reign title of the last emperor of Ming) period.
崇祯 period is from 1628-1644.
So looking at the 2 sources there is a slight mismatch. First one claims to be started around 1620s while the second one claiming it to be earlier in the 1600s. There are also multiple other sources with slightly different dates that push it even further back to late 1500s so the general consensus is that it's around this period of late 16th century to early 17th century.
This was also believed to be the inspiration of the popular Chinese Mahjong (麻将）
As stated here : 麻雀，馬弔之音之轉也。吳人呼禽類如刁，去聲讀，不知何義，則麻雀之為馬弔，已確而有徵矣
Source: 清稗類鈔/087 - 维基文库，自由的图书馆 (wikisource.org) again, e-copy of book on wiki
Roughly translates to '麻雀 (Ma Que), phonetically changed word from 馬弔 (马吊), the Wu people pronounce birds as 刁 (diao, with ancient Chinese tone 4), not sure why, but it's clear that 麻雀 = 馬弔.' 麻雀 is the earlier name used for 麻将 seen in various Qing Dynasty novels.
There are of course many other popular activities during that time, but as you rightfully pointed out, most are pre-existing ones or modified ones from previous eras. I thought this would be unique, at least during Ming, since it's created then, but of course it probably continued through Qing and into the modern world today as 麻将.