Thursday, 12 December 2019

Four suited money cards 2-- Six Red cards 六紅牌

'Three A Strip cards' [Six red cards] Ningpo three A Group co. Ltd.  36c.
三A 條牌[六紅牌], 寧波三A集團有限公司 -- 36副

Some readers are already familliar with the Hakka Six tiger cards. These belong to a family of Chinese money suited cards that have four suits, instead of the usual three.

The deck featured here is called  六紅牌 Liu Hong Pai --Six Red cards. They are also known as 狗兒牌 Gou'er pai -- Doggy cards. Before you ask -- Kitty cards (貓貓牌, maomao pai) do exist. 

These cards are used in Leshan, Sichuan 樂山, 四川. The four suits are  拾 Shi, tens ; 貫 Guan "Strings of a thousand coins" 束, Shu, "strings" and 毛 Mao, "coins". The Chinese Wikipedia Article  describes the cards. The cards are used to play a game called 扯馬股, The Wikipedia article also notes the game is played with a stripped-down "Poker" [i.e. Anglo-American] deck. For such a game, only the Ace-9 of each suit are used.




The shapes of the suits are extremely stylized. The author cannot identify the names of the suits with absolute certainty.

The Ace (?) has the character printed in red, rather than Black. The characters on it seem to be a distorted version of  百元  = Bai Yuan = Hundred Dollars?

The suit sign looks like a scowling man or some pedestal. Note the curiously shaped Nine, which is printed in red. It resembles an elephant's trunk or a person's leg. 

The figure of the suit resembles a fish. Again, the Nine is printed in red. 
毛?
The author cannot identify the suit with certainty. The nine is in this instance, printed in black. The card labelled "1" he thinks is the Ace. However, he is not sure of its identity, or what are the highly stylized characters are. 

Here are the numerals of the deck. 

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