The earliest mention of them I have came across is in the "Catalogue of the collection of playing cards bequeathed to the Trustees of the British museum by the late Lady Charlotte Schreiber", printed in 1901. The deck is tersely described:
No. 32. From Chungking. Oiled cards, red backs. Consists of eight each of the eight characters contained in a familiar prayer : —
壽 比 南 山 福 如 東 海
That is, May you have " Long life like the southern hills, happiness as (the broad) east sea." There are in addition eight blanks, bringing the total number of cards in the pack up to 72. N.B. The Chinese usually write the phrase in reversed order: 福如東海，壽比南山 -- Fu Ru Donghai, Shou Bi Nanshan, i.e. Happiness as the broad East Sea, Long Life like the Southern Hills. A word-by word translation is as follows:
I will present two decks of cards in this post. They seem to be the only types available at present.
1: "Wa'er pai" .Taizhou Yunping plastic playing-card factory. 72c.
1: 娃儿牌-- 台州市路桥 云平塑料牌厂. 72 副
This deck is made by a company in Luqiao, a town in Taizhou. Taizhou is in Central China, and is quite a distance away from Chongqing /Chungking, which the British Museum cards are from. The Chinese Wikipedia article on the cards says they are used in Chongqing and and Sichuan.
This deck, and the British Museum Deck are similar in structure. There are Nine subjects in both deck. Eight of these subjects are Chinese characters that make up the phrase 壽比南山 福如東海 The ninth subject [ in my deck] is a card that depicts the figure of a child, called in Chinese the 娃兒"Wa'er" -- Dolly.There are eight copies of each card, yielding a deck of 72 cards. One of the eight copies of each subject is marked with the picture of a doll/ child . Cards so marked play a role in the game.
The "Plain" cards, arranged in order. The cards themselves use the Simplified version of the Chinese Characters. The Traditional forms of the characters ( Used in the Catalogue ) are shown below each card. The right-most card, with a human figure is the " Dolly" card. These cards are made of plastic.
The Eight "Marked" cards. As you can see, each card bears the motif of a child in the middle. In addition, each of the Chinese Characters has a small quatrefoil in the top-right corner.
On the Marked dolly , a large Chinese seal replaces the human figure, which is placed in the middle of the card. The words on the seal, written in the archaic seal-script are "太平天國" -- Taiping Tianguo-- Tai Ping Heavenly Kingdom.
2: Wawa pai. [anon] 72c.
2: [娃娃牌]:72 副
The structure of this deck, and the above deck are identical. The main difference is in the material the cards are made of. The cards in this deck are made of a varnished/Lacquered fabric. The manufacturer states the fabric is silk. The faces are a beige colour, and their backs are plain red, in which brushstrokes can be seen. When the cards are new, they are heavily impregnated with a sort of white powder to prevent them from sticking. Cleaned of the powder ( which the manufacturer says is gypsum) the cards look like this:
The Plain suit. Like the cards above, they use the Simplified Chinese Characters. The Dolly card ( far right) contains a much more elaborate human figure than the one featured above. It shows a child bearing a vase of flowers. Also note the cards have square corners.
The marked cards. The cards are structurally similar to those in deck 1. They possess a human figure in the middle, and the characters have a mark. In this deck, however, the mark is a star/asterisk unlike the quatrefoil of the deck above.
The marked Dolly card ( Far right) also has a "Seal", but the characters are now written in a more normal font, imitating handwriting . The human figure on that card is missing its face; such errors/vagaries in printing are frequently encountered in the deck.
I shall describe the game played with these cards in another post. In summary, the game involves forming melds of cards. It resembles mahjong, but it has its own perculiar scoring system. Melds involving the marked cards score extra points.
