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Playing card A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a f ...
s () were most likely invented in China during the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279). They were certainly in existence by the
Mongol The Mongols ( mn, Монголчууд, , , ; ; russian: Монголы) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, Inner Mongolia in China and the Buryatia Republic of the Russian Federation. The Mongols are the principal member ...
Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fif ...
(1271-1368).Lo, Andrew. (2000)
The Game of Leaves: An Inquiry into the Origin of Chinese Playing Cards
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 63(3), 389–406.
Chinese use the word ''pái'' (), meaning "plaque", to refer to both playing cards and tiles.Lo, Andrew (2004) 'China's Passion for Pai: Playing Cards, Dominoes, and Mahjong.' In: Mackenzie, C. and Finkel, I., (eds.), Asian Games: The Art of Contest. New York: Asia Society, pp. 227-229. Many early sources are ambiguous, and do not specifically refer to paper ''pái'' (cards) or bone ''pái'' (tiles). In terms of game play, however, there is no difference; both serve to hide one face from the other players with identical backs.
Card games A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card ...
are examples of imperfect information games as opposed to
Chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...
or Go. Many western scholars, like William Henry Wilkinson, Stewart Culin, Thomas F. Carter, and
Michael Dummett Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett (27 June 1925 – 27 December 2011) was an English academic described as "among the most significant British philosophers of the last century and a leading campaigner for racial tolerance and equality." He ...
attribute to the Chinese the invention of playing cards. Michael Dummett also contends that the concept of suits and the idea of
trick-taking game A trick-taking game is a card or tile-based game in which play of a '' hand'' centers on a series of finite rounds or units of play, called ''tricks'', which are each evaluated to determine a winner or ''taker'' of that trick. The object of suc ...
s were invented in China. Trick-taking games eventually became multi-trick games. These then evolved into the earliest type of
rummy Rummy is a group of matching-card games notable for similar gameplay based on matching cards of the same rank or sequence and same suit. The basic goal in any form of rummy is to build '' melds'' which can be either sets (three or four of a k ...
games during the eighteenth century. By the end of the monarchy, the vast majority of traditional Chinese card games were of the draw-and-discard or fishing variety. Chinese playing cards have proliferated into
Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...
by Chinese immigrants. They were also formerly known in Mongolia.


Earliest references

The '' leaf game'' played from the reign of Emperor Yizong of Tang in 868 to the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) is often mistaken for a card game but it is described as a type of Shengguan Tu, a
board game Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a co ...
played with
dice Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing ...
in which players consulted the leaves (pages) of a book. Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072) and Li Qingzhao (1084 – c. 1155) recorded that the leaf game's rules were lost by their time. The writer Yáng Yì (974-1020) and his friends are the last known players of the leaf game. The earliest unambiguous reference to playing cards is from a 1320 legal compilation, the ''Da Yuan shengzheng guochao dianzhang'' (), during the Yuan dynasty. It refers to a 17 July 1294 case in which two gamblers, Yan Sengzhu and Zheng Pig-Dog, were arrested in
Shandong Shandong ( , ; ; Chinese postal romanization, alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal Provinces of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in His ...
along with nine of their paper playing cards and the woodblocks used to print them.


Domino cards

Chinese dominoes first appeared around the Southern Song dynasty and are derived from all twenty-one combinations of a pair of
dice Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing ...
. They became available in card format around 1600. Though not visually apparent, they are divided into two suits: civil and military (originally Chinese and barbarian respectively until the
Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...
). The invention of the concept of suits increased the level of strategy in trick-taking games; the card of one suit cannot beat the card of another suit regardless of its rank. The idiosyncratic ranking and suits come from Chinese dice games. come in different sizes. Smaller decks are used in trick-taking and banking games. 32-card decks, with the civil suit doubled, are used to play Tien Gow and Pai Gow. Larger decks, for rummy or fishing games, may have well over a hundred cards and can include wild cards. Although originating from tiles, domino card games inspired the creation of a tile game, . Unlike regular domino tiles, these are short and squat allowing them to stand upright like mahjong tiles. This is a fairly old game, possibly preceding mahjong by decades if not a century.


Money-suited cards

Money-suited cards have attracted the most attention from scholars. They are considered to be the ancestors of most of the world's playing cards. Each suit represents a different unit of currency. Lu Rong (1436–1494) described a four-suited 38-card deck: *
Cash In economics, cash is money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins. In bookkeeping and financial accounting, cash is current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-im ...
or Coins: 1 to 9 Cash * Strings of Cash: 1 to 9 Strings *
Myriad A myriad (from Ancient Greek grc, μυριάς, translit=myrias, label=none) is technically the number 10,000 (ten thousand); in that sense, the term is used in English almost exclusively for literal translations from Greek, Latin or Sinospher ...
s of Strings: 1 to 9 Myriad *Tens of Myriads: 20 to 90 Myriad, Hundred Myriad, Thousand Myriad, and Myriad Myriad (11 cards in total) There is no 10 Myriad card as it would share the same name as its suit. By the late 16th-century, the suit of Cash added two more cards: Half Cash and Zero Cash. The Cash suit was also in reverse order with the lower number cards beating the higher. This feature also appeared in other early card games like Ganjifa, Tarot, Ombre, and Maw. During the
Ming The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han pe ...
and Qing dynasties, the suit of Myriads and Tens depicted characters from the novel the '' Water Margin'' which is why they were also called . They were also known as Madiao cards after one of the most popular games. The suits of Cash and Strings derive their pips from early Chinese banknotes. Some cards, most commonly the highest and lowest of each suit, will have a red stamp mimicking banknote seals. On both ends of some decks are markings that serve as indices to let players fan their cards. From at least the 17th-century, games played with stripped decks became more popular. This was done by removing the suit of Tens save for the Thousand Myriad as in the game of Khanhoo. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Thousand Myriad, Half Cash, and Zero Cash took on new identities as the suitless Old Thousand, White Flower, and Red Flower respectively. They are sometimes joined by a "Ghost" card. The Myriad Myriad card disappeared by the late 19th century. During the Qing dynasty, draw-and-discard games became more popular and the 30-card deck was often multiplied with each card having two to five copies. noted that the three-suited decks were ten times more popular than four-suited ones prior to 1783, a disparity which has since significantly increased. Mahjong, which also exists in card format, was derived from these types of games during the middle of the 19th century. Four-suited decks still exist and are used by the
Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...
to play , a multi-trick game. Six Tigers decks lack illustrations and instead just have ideograms of the rank and suit of each card. Another structurally similar deck is Bài Bất found in Vietnam; its three-suit version is Tổ tôm. These Vietnamese cards were redesigned by Camoin of Marseilles during French colonial rule to depict people wearing traditional Japanese costumes from the
Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...
. Direct foreign derivatives include in Vietnam, Pai Tai in Thailand, and or Cherki in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Korean Tujeon cards were possibly a descendant. Ultimately, all four-suited decks (especially Italian and Spanish suited packs) are indirectly descended from the money-suited system through Mamluk playing cards. File:Chong Ning Tongbao 1.JPG, Song dynasty coin File:Jiao zi.jpg, Song banknote File:Chinesische-Käschschnüre.JPG, Strings of coins File:1000cashbanknote.jpg, Ming banknote File:SongJiang.jpg, Myriad Myriad card depicting Song Jiang as illustrated by Chen Hongshou for a drinking game. File:Kinesiska spelkort för kortspelet Mo Diao - Skoklosters slott - 13617.tif, Madiao cards in the collection of Skoklosters slott File:MJ Old.png, Various types of Money-suited playing cards


Character cards

Character cards, printed with
Chinese characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji ...
, first appeared during the middle of the Qing dynasty. There are several types of character cards but are all used to play rummy-like games. Number cards are quite similar to Six Tigers packs but each deck contains only two suits and includes rank 10. Both suits are labelled in Chinese numerals but one is in ordinary script while the other is in the financial or formal script. Some decks come with special suitless cards. There are 4 copies of each card. are based on a copybook called "'" used by students from the Tang to the Qing dynasty and mentioned in
Lu Xun Zhou Shuren (25 September 1881 – 19 October 1936), better known by his pen name Lu Xun (or Lu Sun; ; Wade–Giles: Lu Hsün), was a Chinese writer, essayist, poet, and literary critic. He was a leading figure of modern Chinese literature. ...
's novel ''
Kong Yiji "Kong Yiji" () is a short-story by Lu Xun, the founder of modern Chinese literature. The story was originally published in the journal ''New Youth'' (Chinese: 新青年) in April 1919 and was later included in Lu Xun's first collection of short ...
''. There are 24 or 25 series of cards with each series based on a character from that book. Each series contains four or five identical cards. One variation known as 3-5-7 decks, contain 27 different series but with an uneven number of cards, some have two, three, or five cards with the total being 110 cards. contain eight series of cards repeated eight times. One card from each series is a special version of the card differentiated from the rest by depicting a human or doll. Each series is marked by one character that when strung together forms a blessing. Included in each deck is a ninth characterless series with seven cards showing one doll and one card showing two dolls. They are found in
Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of t ...
and Chongqing. Unlike other types of Chinese cards, they have not spread to other countries and are largely confined to southern China. File:湖南的字牌.png, Number cards from
Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangx ...
. Upper cards are in the ordinary suit while the lower ones are in the formal suit. File:上大人牌.png, Great Man cards. Inscription is to be read from right to left. File:娃兒牌.png, Doll cards from Chongqing.


Chess cards

Cards based on
xiangqi ''Xiangqi'' (; ), also called Chinese chess or elephant chess, is a strategy board game for two players. It is the most popular board game in China. ''Xiangqi'' is in the same family of games as '' shogi'', '' janggi'', Western chess, '' ...
(also known as Chinese chess) appeared during the nineteenth century. They are generally divided into two categories, those with two suits known as red or , and those with four suits known as four color cards. Each suit contains cards named after the seven different chessmen. Some decks have multiple copies of each card and may also contain "gold" wild cards. Most games are rummy-like but the two-suited tam cúc in Vietnam is a multi-trick game. Like money-suited cards with mahjong tiles, there are tile versions of chess cards. In Taiwan, two-suited versions are used to play ' while the four-suited ones are found in Malaysia.


References


External links


Chinese playing cards
at World of Playing Cards

an

at Andy's Playing Cards
Money-suited playing cards
at The Mahjong Tile Set
Chinese and Southeast Asian playing cards and tiles
at onebadcards * category at Wikipedia's Chinese language site



{{Playing card packs by geography Chinese card games History of card decks Playing cards