Miscellaneous books are not necessarily pornographic, and theater troupes are not reality shows. What parents and teachers allow children to be exposed to and what they don't have to do has less to do with the content of the thing itself and more to do with the "nature and effects of exposure to the thing".
The term "miscellaneous books" is actually still used today. When I was in middle school, my parents didn't allow me to read extracurricular books for a while, not even Jane Eyre or National Geographic. At that time, except for the textbooks of various subjects, most of the books were miscellaneous books in their eyes, except for the book by Wang Houxiong. In fact, a lot of books even in the negative information are almost no, not to mention what the yellow gambling and drug. But in the eyes of parents and teachers, as long as they are "miscellaneous books", they will affect learning. And they can't catch us when we're reading them on night study halls or under the covers with flashlights.
So the reason why the so-called miscellaneous books are regarded as flood beasts by parents and teachers has little to do with whether the books are yellow or not, but mainly because of two problems: firstly, it affects the business. Secondly, it is not good to manage.
The situation has been the same throughout the ages. Baochai educated Daiyu, precisely because she thought that girls reading books would "change their temperament" and deviate from the right path. As for the boys, their main career is to work in the economy, so reading miscellaneous books is even more treacherous. Even so, when Baoyu asked his trusted servant to go outside and find a few volumes of forbidden books to hide and read, Jia Zheng didn't even know about it.
The influence of miscellaneous books on children is profound and subtle, precisely because it is difficult to prevent, so it should be strictly prevented.
And listen to the theater it, rather than some eighteen forbidden reality show, more like a family together to see a show or a movie. A rich family keeping an opera troupe is somewhat similar to today's powerful people chartering a theater for themselves and inviting stars for private performances - no matter what, it's always a large family's leisure entertainment during festivals and holidays, without delaying the children's normal studies. Even if there was 'inappropriate content for children' in this theater, after all, there was parental supervision, not to mention the fact that many of the plays that the extended family listened to were suitable for both young and old. In other words, compared to reading miscellaneous books, raising an opera troupe is relatively 'unaffected by business' and relatively 'manageable'.
In addition, the ancients only let the children listen to the opera, but also strictly forbade their own young people to hang out with the theater - that's why Jia Zheng was so angry about Baoyu hanging out with Qiguan. It's not the opera troupe that we have to guard against, it's the "children who get too close to the opera troupe to do things that aren't quite on the table".