Mahjong cards. Da Zong, Yiwushi Chuiyun Wanjuchang, Zhejiang, China. Bespoke deck, Chinese money suited, 144 cards. Size: 46mm x 86mm.
Deck make-up:
Dots, bamboos, characters: 1-9 (four of each).
Winds: east, south, west, north (four of each).
Dragons: red, green, white (four of each).
Extras:
Seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter (one of each).
Flowers: plum blossom, orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum (one of each).
Mahjong is a tile-based game that was developed in China during the Qing dynasty (the earliest surviving mahjong sets date to the 1870s when the game was largely confined to Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Jiangsu). It uses a set of tiles derived from money-suited cards (for a primer on this, read the initial text here). Mahjong and its regional variants are widely played throughout eastern and south-eastern Asia and have become popular in Western countries too. Similar to the Western card game rummy, mahjong is a game of skill, strategy, and calculation and involves a degree of chance. In Chinese, the game was originally called máquè – meaning sparrow – which is still used in some southern dialects. It is said that the clacking of tiles during shuffling resembles the chattering of sparrows. Due to the large size of a set of tiles, smaller-sized tiles were developed for travel use. Finally, in recent years, playing mahjong using cards (as shown here) has become popular and, except amongst purists, will probably replace the tile version in time to come.
A set of mahjong tiles usually has at least 136 tiles (most commonly 144); however, sets originating from the United States or south-east Asia will probably have more. There are three main suits. In each of these suits, the tiles are numbered from 1 to 9. The suits are, in English: dots (sometimes called circles), bamboos, and characters. There are four identical copies of each tile.
The three suits are joined by two so-called "honour" suits: winds and dragons. The winds are: east, south, west, and north. The dragons are: red, green, and white. Again, there are four copies of each tile.
Finally, there are two sets of bonus tiles – flowers and seasons – each of which has four members. Each of these eight tiles carries a different artistic rendering of a specific type of flower or season. There is only one copy of each of these tiles.
Mahjong cards are very widely available worldwide, unlike all other of the Chinese money-suited patterns. Probably, in time, they will remain the only extant pattern of this type. It is useful, therefore, to realise that a standard money-suited deck can easily be made from a mahjong deck – just remove the winds, flowers and seasons. If you additionally need flower cards / jokers, red dragon and white dragon can stand in for Red Flower and White Flower, and the green dragon can be Old Thousand. Need more than four copies of each card? Just merge two identical decks.
Click on any card to explore the design.
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Card image size, below:
The dots are derived from the smallest valued of the suits in the Chinese money-suited card system: that of cash. They're also known as circles, wheels, balls, stones or coins. The Chinese call the suit bobbins, barrels, or pancakes/flatbreads (in Chinese, obviously!) Because of the large size of the circle in the 1 dot, it is commonly nicknamed "the big pancake".
In the Chinese money-suit system, these knobbly "sticks" are actually strings of coins but they were misinterpreted by Joseph Park Babcock (an oil engineer who was an early pioneer of the game in the West) as being bamboo plants, hence the English name. In Chinese, this suit has several names but they all translate along the lines of thread, string or rope.
The first tile/card usually has a bird (traditionally, a peacock or sparrow) instead of a single bamboo. This seems to be a mutation (around 1920?) from an ornate original depiction of a single string of coins (below).
This, rather boring, suit is generally called characters, numbers or cracks in English. It is the highest of the suits taken from the money-suited system, and represents myriads (10,000s) of coins. The lower character on the tiles/cards is one (of two) characters ( 萬 ) that the Chinese use to represent a myriad. The upper character is simply the rank of the tile in everyday Chinese numerals (except, usually, the 5 which uses the official version of the numeral instead, 伍 ).
The wind honours (from left): east, south, west, north.
The so-called "dragons" (from left): red, green, white. Dragons is a misnomer (again, by Babcock) and these tiles are not called that in China (they are the "fundamentals" or, sometimes, "arrow" tiles). According to thoughtco.com: "This threesome has several meanings which are derived from the ancient imperial exam, archery, and Confucius' cardinal virtues."
The symbol on the red tile means center or middle, part of the phrase "hóng zhōng, which connotes passing the imperial exam, a hit in archery, and the Confucian virtue of benevolence". The symbol on green means wealth, "but it also represents an archer releasing his or her draw and the Confucian virtue of sincerity". The white dragon was originally blank; it now usually has a simple border to avoid people confusing it with a spare tile. It means "freedom from corruption, a miss in archery, or the Confucian virtue of filial piety".
These honours became part of the game gradually: the whites entered the game first, followed by the reds circa 1870, and finally the greens which entered the set by 1890.
These are optional tiles/cards and usage varies. Often, when drawn, they are set aside and the player gets to draw again. Designs differ but these tiles usually depict stylised representations of flowers. The quartet on the left are the the four noble flowers (or plants) of Confucian reckoning: plum blossom, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum. On the right we have the seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. For some reason, it has become fairly standard to have the numbers on the flowers shown with Hindu–Arabic numerals, but the seasons' numbers in everyday Chinese numerals.
These two groups of tiles are the only ones in a standard mahjong set which are not duplicated four times.
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)