history
The game traces back to Tang-Song banquet entertainments and shows up famously in 《红楼梦》 (Dream of the Red Chamber) chapter 54, where the Jia family plays it during the Lantern Festival - whoever the drumbeat stops on must drink wine and tell a joke. The figurative finance use ('passing the bubble until someone is left holding it') has become extremely common in business writing about speculative manias.
culture
Modern equivalents: at family gatherings the drum is now usually a phone playing music (音乐停 'stop the music' rather than 鼓停); the forfeit is performing a song, downing a drink, or doing a dare. 最后一棒 ('the last baton') is the stock phrase for whoever gets stuck.
