塑料字牌, 鑫宾 80+1副
Yet another of the character cards. Although not explicitly known as such, the cards are probably manufactured to play the game 'Two-Seven-Ten", like one featured earlier in this blog.
The suit of large characters When compared to other examples, the characters are printed in a font that is almost identical to normal print.
The small suit.
The card marked A is 底換-- Di Huan.-- "Bottom/ Switch"
Isao Umebayashi's article on the game Two-Ten-Seven ( The Playing-Card volume XXV No 4.), shows an image of a similar deck, which had a card with the same words (底/換) as the present card, except the words were written on opposite ends of the card.
Mr. Umebayashi and his translator (George Hatton ) could not find the mandarin pronunciations of the characters. They had to make do with the Japanese and Cantonese pronunciations.
The author remedies the defect below:
The author remedies the defect below:
底=Soko (Japanese) = Tai (Cantonese)= Di (Mandarin)= Bottom
換= Kan (Japanese) = Oon (Cantonese) = Huan (Mandarin) = Switch
換= Kan (Japanese) = Oon (Cantonese) = Huan (Mandarin) = Switch
Cards that possess the extra bottom/switch card now seem to be quite rare.