Chinese Numeral Cards. Laughing About ( 笑谈中 ), Zhejiang, China. Regular deck, Chinese numeral cards, 80 cards. Size: 33mm x 158mm.
Deck make-up:
Black: 1 through 10 (4 of each).
Red: 1 through 10 (4 of each).
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 ). Next are "character cards", a large family of patterns which usually feature numerals or individual characters from sagacious Chinese sayings, and which interest us here. Finally, are the "money-suited cards". These are so called as the suits of these decks are based on different denominations of Chinese money.
"Character cards" are a wide family of tradition Chinese playing cards, all of which are long and thin and carry a Chinese character (sometimes very, very stylised) on both ends. The vast majority of patterns in this family have two suits, black and red; a very few have three. (Sometimes Chinese chess cards, which look somewhat similar, are included as part of this family, but I am not doing so here.) Most of this family of cards come from the south or south-west of China, and are used to play rummy-like games. Broadly, the various categories of decks in the family are:
These are based on quotes from a copybook called On the Great Man (Confucius) which was used by students from the Tang to the Qing dynasty and was mentioned in Lu Xun's popular novel Kong Yiji.
The number of cards varies across patterns (anywhere from four to seven copies of each character, possibly with some copies visually differentiated as special in some way) but the base set of (usually) 24 characters on the cards is roughly:
上 大 人 孔 乙 己 化 三 千 七 十 士 爾 小 生 八 九 子 佳 作 仁 可 知 禮
Google Translate doesn't really give anything too sane when it converts this to English. Perhaps somebody else can help?
Different patterns assign a standardised, but seemingly arbitrary, selection of the characters to red while the rest are black. The various patterns also include different amounts of special cards and jokers.
The text on these decks comes is the same as with the Great Man cards (but in slightly modified 22-character form). However, this time the black / red selection of cards is different. The cards chosen to be red include those representing the digits 3, 5 and 7, hence the name. The main cards have five copies, with some copies of selected characters differentiated. The number of jokers varies (one or two).
The characters on these come from an old blessing: "Blessed as the east sea, and as long-lived as the south mountains," ( 福如東海壽比南山娃 ) Each card is duplicated eight times, perhaps with one copy differentiated in some way. The cards usually carry a picture of a toy doll / puppet or something similar in the centre of them, hence the name. Each alternate character from the saying is coloured red followed by the next in black, and so on. Another scheme assigns the first and fifth characters to red, the others to black. There are usually no extra cards.
These contain cards carrying the Chinese numbers 1 through 10. There are two sets of cards: one carrying everyday numerals (employed for non-legal and casual purposes and using a simplified set of strokes) and the other set carrying official numerals (as used on certificates, bonds and so forth). Both of these sets are shown in the table below. The assignment to red or black uses two different schemes. Vanilla "2-7-10 cards" (generally from in and around Hunan province) assign those three numbers, in both styles of numerals, to red and the rest to black. Another scheme (Sichuan province) has all the official-numeral cards in red, the everdays in black; despite this, they are still referred to as "2-7-10 cards". In both schemes, there are usually four copies of each of the main numeral cards, and sometimes assorted jokers are included.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Everyday | 一 | 二 | 三 | 四 | 五 | 六 | 七 | 八 | 九 | 十 |
Official | 壹 | 貳 | 參 | 肆 | 伍 | 陸 | 柒 | 捌 | 玖 | 拾 |
This deck is made up of numeral cards in the Sichuan version of the 2-7-10 pattern, as mentioned above. The cards are printed in two colours on thick plastic. The back of the cards is textured to help with grip.
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 black suit carries the numbers 1 through 10 in everyday Chinese numerals, though very heavily stylised. Testing myself blind, I managed to assign them all correctly except the 4 and 9 which I got the wrong way around. The 4 is the most bizarre of all.
The red suit carries the numbers 1 through 10 in official Chinese numerals. The stylisation not quite as severe as with the blacks, above.
The large characters on the box are 2, 7 and 10 in both sets of numerals.
The QR code doesn't seem to work, at least for me.
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)