Chinese Ancient-styled "Money-suited" Cards

Mamluk cards and Japanese Karuta discussed, why not Chinese cards?

You know, it is said that it was Chinese who invented the earliest playing cards. And there still remain some types which preserve the ancient ""money-suited" style.

"Dong Guan Pai" is one of them.

You can read its details here:
http://www.geocities.com/a_pollett/cards8.htm
And also:
http://www.pagat.com/rummy/quan_dui.html

Luckily I could get hold of some Dong Guan decks recently.
They are about 20 - 30 years old, made of paper, in very good condition
The picture is here:
http://blogimg.goo.ne.jp/user_image/12/d4/415134f4b0acba9d388d61c0c2abb790.jpg
(Probably the link doesn't work... Then, just try again by clicking the URL
on the ERROR page.)

The seller said that there was no prospect that they could get more once gone out of stock, so I purchased all the decks left.
If anyone wants, I can send one for US$10, including airmail postage etc.
Just PM me if interested.

Intriguing looking deck Kenji, thank you for the information and links.

I'm reading Andy's site now...

Moonbow*

"Chinese tarot" in Eliphas Levi's book

Eliphas Levi mentions this type of Chinese cards as "Chinese Tarot" in his book.

"The Ritual of Transcendental Magic" (Translated by A.E.Waite)
Chapter XXII "The Book of Hermes", p141.

"We have a Chinese Tarot before us, and the Imperial Library [NOTE: presently BnF] contains samples of others that are similar. M. Paul Boiteau, in his remarkable work on playing-cards, has given some admirably executed specimens. The Chinese Tarot preserves several primeval emblems; the deniers and swords are plainly distinguishable, but it would be less easy to discover the cups and clubs."

Here he seems to mean DENIERS = Chinese COINS, SWORDS = STRINGS.
In Levi's manuscript book named "Carnet de Notes", he copies some
Chinese money-suited cards by hand. He gives the title "as d'epée"
(Ace of Swords) to the image of "1 of Strings".

Pictures of Levi's Sketches

Here you can see Levi's sketches:
http://blog.goo.ne.jp/valet_de_coupe/e/43df565661b8816357490f3d7c9ce256

I also uploaded an image of the Chinese cards plate from Paul Boiteau's "Les Cartes A Jouer et La Cartomancie" (1854), which Levi mentions in the quote above.

There's a little more background info here @ early history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_card

Besides Andy's great site, the best on the web concerning Chinese cards, there is a classic paper on Chinese playing cards by W. H. Wilkinson (1895)
http://www.gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/Archives/Wilkinson/Wilkinson.html

which contains a great deal of information. His speculation about Marco Polo having brought cards back is universally rejected nowadays, as is his idea that the 21 trumps and Fool are directly related to the domino pips.

However, his explanation of the origin of the suit signs still has currency, and even his idea that the "wan" symbol (10,000), inverted, is the origin of the Cups suit. Nobody has proposed a better explanation yet.

Ross

Is it known if any of these cards on coloured paper?

As a child, I saw long, thin strips of coloured paper used in a game by some of the men at a social gathering my family attended. Since I was interested in playing cards & curious about these different 'cards', tried to get a closer look, but was told it was 'men's business'.

Thanks for a most intriguing subject & for the reference sources, too.

MeeWah said:

Is it known if any of these cards on coloured paper?

As a child, I saw long, thin strips of coloured paper used in a game by some of the men at a social gathering my family attended. Since I was interested in playing cards & curious about these different 'cards', tried to get a closer look, but was told it was 'men's business'.

Click to expand...

"Four Colour Cards" (also known as Chess Cards) which are the four suits -
http://www.geocities.com/a_pollett/cards18.htm

See especially Wei-Hwa Huang's page for very good pictures and rules -
http://www.ofb.net/~whuang/ugcs/gp/ssp/

I would like to have some of these cards.

Ross

Gee, Ross must be the King of Googling. I tried and didn't get anywhere near this!

Debra said:

Gee, Ross must be the King of Googling. I tried and didn't get anywhere near this!

Click to expand...

LOL - I recalled it from somewhere, and I started where you should always start when looking up regional patterns - with Andy's site.

Then the next stop is pagat.com,
http://www.pagat.com/national/china.html
http://www.pagat.com/rummy/si_se_pai.html
http://www.pagat.com/class/chess.html

... and just loads of links

(I love Chinese cards, and take every opportunity to learn something new about any of the different traditional varieties)

Ross