Chinese Playing Cards

Above: 8 cards from an unusual chromolithographed Mah Jong pack, c.1910, in which the suits show 108 characters from the 'Story of the Water Margin'. The suit sign, printed in blue, is the old form of 'wan', meaning 10,000, as shown on the higher ranking suit(s) of old money suited cards which traditionally showed the Water Margin characters. (Courtesy of John Berry).

Chinese playing cards date from at least 1294, when Yen Sengzhu and Zheng Pig-Dog were apparantly caught gambling in Enzhou (in modern Shandong Province). The law case notes that nine paper cards and thirty six taels of zhong tong period (1260-1264) paper currency were seized, along with wood blocks for printing cards. Unfortunately, we do not know anything more about the total number of cards in the pack or the markings, etc. Our next source is from the writings of the Ming dynasty scholar Lu Rong (1436-1494), who notes that he was sneered at for not knowing how to play cards when he was a government student at Kunshan in modern Jiangsu Province. (Source: Andrew Lo "The Late Ming Game of Ma Diao" in The Playing-Card journal, Volume XXIX, Number 3, I.P.C.S.)

Below: Money cards; 5 sets of 30 cards, plus five cards with full-length figures and an additional card marked Wang Pai (trump card), total 156. Manufactured by Zhejiang Wuyi United Printing Company Limited, Zhejiang Province, on the eastern coast of China.