Chinese Chess Cards. All American Group, Guangdong Quanmei Poker Co., China. Regular deck, Chinese chess cards, 120 cards. Size: 20mm x 104mm.
Deck make-up:
Red, yellow, white, green: 7 cards each as per Chinese chess pieces (4 copies of each).
Extras: jokers x5, blank card, title cards x2.
Playing cards were most likely invented in China during the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279). They were certainly in existence by the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) as a 1320 legal compilation refers to a 1294 case in which two gamblers were arrested in Shandong along with nine of their paper playing cards and the woodblocks used to print them.
Some of the types of traditional Chinese playing cards that evolved since those times are still made even today. Size-wise, they are, almost exclusively, longer and much thinner in size than the standard "poker" playing cards of the West. Traditionally the Chinese cards have been made of card or thickish paper but these days are typically made of thin plastic. Below, you can see the main categories of the historical Chinese cards still in production. On the left are "domino cards", which feature different permutations of domino pips at the end of each card. Then there are "chess cards", which feature characters corresponding to the names of the pieces in Chinese chess (xiangqi ) and which interest us here. Next are "character cards", a large family of patterns which usually feature numerals or individual characters from sagacious Chinese sayings. Finally, are the "money-suited cards". These are so called as the suits of these decks are based on different denominations of Chinese money.
Chinese "chess cards" are a common type of traditional playing cards. They are used for playing meld-making games in which you draw cards and use them to build melds for which you earn points. Mahjong in China, gin in the West, and hanafuda in Japan are all types of meld-making games. Chess cards are each printed with one character borrowed from the seven Chinese chess (xiangqi) pieces.
Four-colour chess cards originate in south and south-eastern China and are associated with the Hokkien community.
The deck is divided into four coloured suits (hence the nickname "four colour cards") – red, yellow, white, and green (with green sometimes being replaced by blue) each with 28 cards. Each of the seven chess characters is repeated four times within each suit (hence the 28). So, 4 (coloured suits) x 28 (cards per suit) = 112 cards in total. Note that decks also exist, generally in south-east Asia outside China, with just two copies of each card instead of four (thus 56 cards).
It must be emphasised that the use of the names of the Chinese chess pieces is traditional and, in fact, you could simply use the digits 1 to 7 or the characters A through G instead and the game would not be affected. The borrowing of the chess pieces' names is where the relationship to the board game begins and ends.
A further complication, again traditional, is that each suit uses one of two different (but closely related) sets of Chinese characters for the Chess-piece names. The red cards and yellow cards use one set; the white and greens, the other. The use of the two different characters to mean the same thing is cosmetic and has no effect on gameplay – it simply reflects the board game of chess where each side's pieces are marked in this way. In fact, sets of cards originating from Hong Kong do actually stick to using one set of characters on all four suits.
Here is a chart to summarise things (note that there are sometimes variations between patterns). As you can see, the red / yellow variants often use additional radicals in front of the "main" part of the character. At other times, the two variants might be homophones of each other.
English piece name / s → | soldier / pawn | cannon | chariot / cart | horse | elephant | advisor / guard / major | general / king |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Red / yellow | 兵 | 炮 / 砲 | 俥 | 傌 | 相 | 仕 | 帥 |
White / green | 卒 | 包 | 車 | 馬 | 象 | 士 | 將 |
The cards also usually have some sort of writing or graphics in the middle – these additions are merely to fill up the vacant space and have no effect on gameplay.
Some decks include jokers.
There are also less well-known versions of chess-card decks which have just two colours, usually red and black – and this time it's usually the character's printed colour which varies, not the background colour of the card (which is always white). Confusingly, these are often still referred to as "four-colour" cards! These decks have varying numbers of copies of each card plus possibly some jokers, though which exactly of these assorted patterns are still available at time of writing would take some research.
However, one common and extant variant of a two-color chess deck is that which carries cards in the same numbers as the pieces used for xiangqi – red and black each having one general, two each of advisors, elephants, chariots, cannons and horses, and five soldiers. In Vietnam, such a 32-card deck is used for the trick-taking game tam cúc ("three chrysanthemums"). In Malaysia, a game called giog is played with this pack, and in parts of China, a game called jū mǎ pāo (meaning "chariot, horse, cannon"). These games can also be played with the original round chess pieces – in fact, that's probably how they started – as well as with cards.
According to the advert, the pattern below comes from Minnan, Fujian province in south China. The ad continues (courtesy here of Google Translate): "Four-color cards were popular in Fujian and Taiwan in the early 20th century, and spread to Chaozhou, Guangdong, and even to south-east Asia. Four-color cards are commonly known as "paper cards" in Fujian, Shihu; four-color in Taiwan, and Chaozhou paper cards in Hong Kong."
The text in the middle of most of the cards is simply the trademark of the manufacturing company.
The cards are printed on thin, smooth plastic.
Click on any card to explore the design.
(Comments or corrections, please e-mail: Click to see e-mail address.)
Card image size, below:
The red suit in this deck is more of a terracotta colour.
Note how the character for the horse ( 傌 ) seems to reflect the four legs of the animal.
As stated in the intro, the red and yellow suits...
...use one set of characters for the ranks.
The white and green suits...
...use an alternative set of characters.
The five jokers here are based on the five ranks of peerage. In order (lowest rank to highest): baron ( 男 ), viscount ( 子 ), earl / count ( 伯 ), marquess ( 侯 ) and duke ( 公 ).
A spare card (which is what I presume it is) is included with the deck. The odd thing is that it is coloured green (what if you lose a red card or something?) But maybe it is used explicitly in some game / s or other?
The backs of all cards are the red colour shown.
The info on the box and title cards is all generic company stuff.
Chinese Money-Suited Cards 1 (Jīn Hóu, Tiānjīn, China)
Chinese Money-Suited Cards 2 (Mín Lè, Shùyáng, China)
Chinese Money-Suited Cards 3 (unknown, China)
Chinese Money-Suited Cards 4 (Taizhou Luqiao Xingqin Plastic Factory, Shenyang, China)
Chinese Money-Suited Cards 5 (Jinxin, Jinxiang, Zhejiang Province, China)
Chinese Money-Suited Cards 6 (Guangzhou Qimiao, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China)
Chinese Money-Suited Cards 7 (unknown, China)
Luk Fu / Six Tigers 1 (Hong Shi Factory, China)
Luk Fu / Six Tigers 2 (Jinzhong Playing Cards, Chongzhou City, Sichuan, China)
Mahjong (Da Zong, Yiwushi Chuiyun Wanjuchang, Zhejiang, China)
Chinese Numeral Cards (Laughing About ( 笑谈中 ), Zhejiang, China)
Chinese Chess Cards (All American Group, Guangdong Quanmei Poker Co., China)