"Lad" pattern 童子

"Lad" pattern, 童子, anon 128 cards, namely 

3 suits

9 cards each suit + 3 extra

4 copies of each of the above;

to which are added 

additional 8 cards   

. 

A deck of money-suited cards purchased in China. They are made of plastic, and have square corners. 

The suit of coins, on the left, the ace, and so on till the 9; the penultimate card on the right 

Notice the delightfully careless way the 8 of coins is arranged

The leftmost card [i.e. the one with the red stripe is the 白花, White Flower] 

The suit of strings. As you may have noticed, these cards have scoops in the top, which serve as indices

the 9 of coins is also arranged in a delightfully careless manner 

The leftmost card is what appears to be a bonus; he has a red X on his chest 

The suit of myriads. The faces are rather mask-like. The 8 of myriads has a small dab of coloir on his head. 

The fouur bonus cards on the deck. 

The third card from the left, depicting a standing figure, is the 童子, or boy

The fourth card from the left, with two red squiuggles is the 千萬, thousand myriad

The back depicts the word 福, prosperity 

Yellow Fish 黄鱼

 黄鱼 = yellow Fish, 120c [30 x 4] 

This deck of money-suited cards comes from _______, China. It is structured much like most common money-suited cards, but it has several interesting features. 

The suit of coins. As you can see, the first unusual feature of this deck is its colour: It is printed in on a yellow background. Ace is on the left, and the 9 is the penultimate card on the right. The 2 of coins contains the word 成, "Complete". 

 The rightmost card is akin to the "Dragons" in Mahjong. Its name is 代宗, one of the emperors of the Tang dynasty, 

The suit of strings. On the left is the ace of strings, which has been depicted as a fish, hence the patern;s name. Notice the marks in the black portion of all the cards; these are the indices. For example, all the aces have a scoop cut on the left, the 2s have a circle, etc. Unlike other decks of money-suited cards, the markings here do not change with the suit. 

The bonus card [rightmost card] depicts Wu Song 武松, one of the heroes of the Chinese novel The water Margin  水浒传. 

The suit of myridads.Each depicts a human visage, and is named after a character of the Water Margin, The 8 of myriads is not named, and instead marked with 福 meaning Luck. The extra card  [2nd from the right] is labelled 刘唐

The back is shown as the rightmost card, The central motif is again the character Fu, meaning luck. 

"Blue Owl" lenormand

 Lenormand J.M.C. "Blue Owl"  Koningsfurt Urania (i.e. Cartamundi), 36c. 

This deck is one of a category of decks that are called "Lenormand" decks: cards specially produced for fortune telling purposes. As many of my readers are unlikely to be knowledgable in fortune-telling, but would nonetheless be interested in knowing more about these cards, I have generated a short introduction to them. 

These cards are named after the 18th century french diviner Madam Lenormand. However( and this is the consensus in the divinatory community) these cards only appeared after her death.  The earliest antecedent of these cards was a set of "coffee cards" published in 1796. https://marykgreer.com/2013/07/12/a-new-lenormand-deck-discovery/, and subsequently taken up by German publishers. 

These cards are a French-suited deck of 36 cards, [i.e. 6-10, J, Q, J, A in each suit] structured identically as those which are used to play Jass. 

The playing-card motifs are consigned to a small corner of each of the cards. The vast majority of each card is taken up by a symbol. It is this symbol that is most immediately important to divinatory purposes. Indeed, some decks omit the playing-card figure entirely.  

There are 36 symbols, one for each card of the deck. Unlike the exotic trumps of the tarot, these symbols are perfectly mundane. Examples include, the Lilly, the Scythe, The Key, the book, and the Dog. A full list of them (along with basic divinatory meanings) can be found here. https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/learn-tarot-with-labyrinthos-academy/an-introduction-to-lenormand-cards-plus-lenormand-card-meaning-list

 Each card in this deck is numbered continually from 1 to 36, although not in the manner that seems logical. Here is the layout 

There are several Lenormand decks made by playing-card companies. This is the most common, made by Koningsfurt Urania, the arm of cartamundi that produces divinatory decks.  It is typically  called the "Blue Owl" from the design of its back

As mentioned above, the pips of the cards are consigned to a small corner of the deck; Nonetheless, they are still legible; they show a french-suited deck that has no indices. The author has been unable to conclusively identify what pattern these cards are of. 

The number answering to each cards is fund in a circle on the left-hand corner. Some cards have numbers in both circles; others, like this, have only one number, the other taken up with monogram "M" 

These cards are made fairly small- much smaller than both poker and European-style decks. There is a pragmatic reason behind this. Many of the "spreads" used in  fortune-telling involve spreading the cards out on a surface. In one case, the "Grand tableau", all 36 cards are spread out. Hence, the cards must be made as small as possible, so they can take up less space. 

The aces of Hearts and spades play a special role in this fortune-telling system. They are respectively, the Man and the woman. These cards represent the person who is setting the question to the oracle, the man if the :querent is a man, and the woman if the querent is a woman. By examining the cards that immediately surround this card, predictions may be made on what would happen to the querent 

The box. The left hand side shows the back of the cards, which depicts a Blue Owl. It is this feature that gives the cards their common name 

Trumps of the Bourgeois Tarot

The subjects of the trumps of Italian suited tarots have been the subject of much attention. The subjects on the french-suited counterparts have not been so well-studied. Granted, there is much diversity in French-suited tarots as a whole. But one particular variety, the  Bourgeois Tarot displays remarkable stability in the subject of the trump-cards.

 I shall thus attempt a thorough description of the trump cards. I have used three decks in my research:
1: A deck published by Grimauld of France, purchased c. 2011 ( previously featured Here)
2: A deck published by "Corfalu Kim'play", Purchased c. 2012 ( Previosuy featured Here)
3: A deck published by Modanio,

Some attempts have been made to describe the trump-cards [ https://sites.google.com/site/tacticclub/Home/introduction/l-histoire-du-tarot ( in French) and http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards28.htm], but none of them have been extremely detailed in their descriptions. I therefore attempt to provide such a description.

No	Description of scene	Polett’s titles	Wikipedia’s titles
1	Jester and lady/ Man in frock coat talks to Perrot	Individual Foolishness	Folly, individual.
2	Girls play at skipping, dolls, etc, / Boys play at soldiers	Childhood	Childhood
3	Three women promenading in street/ Men and women loiter in park	Adolescence	Youth
4	Seated women with child on lap, girl sitting in door playing flute/Interior scene,  Two men  seated in table talking	Mature age	Maturity
5	Interior scene. Two seated women, one sewing other knitting while girl looks on. / Bearded man talks to girl, two boys playing at soldiers standing by	Elderly age	Old age
6	Reapers in field/ Interior scene, Two women seated at table drinking tea.	Morning	Morning
7	Workingmen and women resting in a field/ Interior scene, seated woman holds letter to seated man	Midday	Afternoon
8	Family scene; seated man and women with girl on knee, another girl looks on / Man accompanied by lady pianist sings to an audience	Evening	Evening
9	Man standing with one leg on rock, dog looks on/ Man enters doorway, looks furtively at another smoking, but looking other way	Nighttime	Night
10	Men breaking stones/ Shepherd sitting in field with goats	Earth and Air	Earth/air
11	Man rows woman on lake / men and women at a picnic	Water and fire	Water/ fire
12	Country dance/ Ballroom dance	Dancing	Dance
13	Rural women buying cloth at a draper’s / Urban men and women in a room (department store?)	Shopping	Shopping
14	Hunting party with dogs/ Men fishing with nets on boat, and angling	Open air	Open air
15	Man painting while girl looks on/Man take photograph of seated woman	Art	Visual arts
16	Sheep-shearing scene/  gardener waters plant while well-dressed family look on	Spring	Spring
17	Horse-racing scene / Women winnowing?	Summer	Summer
18	Market scene / Men threshing grain	Autumn	Autumn
19	Interior scene, Women spinning, man reading / Skaters	Winter	Winter
20	Men play at lawn bowling/ Men play at cards	Games	The game
21	Ballroom dance / Military parade, with jester looking on.	Collective foolishness	Folly, collective

Tian Pai 天牌,

天牌，天禄，江西
Tian Pai (= Heaven Cards), Tianlu, Jiangxi ...

This is a curious set of domino cards purchased in China. It is structured like an ordinary deck of domino cards, with the exception that there are 6 copies of each card; 3 decorated, 3 plain. The decorated cards have an image of a flower or plant of some type

The decorated cards have an illustration on them; the plain cards are devoid of any markings except the dots. Notice the pleasingly symmetric swan on the [3/1]

 For the reasons of space, for this image I have omitted the unmarked cards. 

 However, I should stress that ALL the cards come in the marked/unmarked form, like you saw in the first image

Unlike most decks of domino cards (eg _ and _) in this deck, what would be black pips in the ordinary deck are printed green. 

The cards on the far right are the Jokers,; inscribed with the words 百搭 “Hundred Combinations". The trident-like shape in the middle of the left-hand card is actually an archaic variant of the character for 'longevity' 寿， Shou. 

进忠棋牌= Jinzhong Chess cards

进忠棋牌，2688 56+4副

Yet another set of cards based on Chinese chess pieces. Similar cards are called Si Se Pai -- Four Colour cards; and have been featured several times before (Eg This, This, and This ). However, the deck featured here has but two suits, red and black.

The red suit. In the middle of each card are found depictions of two Chinese lanterns. On them are written the words 棋牌 QiPai = Chess Cards. 

The black suit. Like actual chinese chess sets, the characters for the equivalent ranks are written slightly differntly between the suits. 

This deck is unusual, as the black suit has an extra card, (shown on the far right of the image) which is the "Brave" 勇. 

The Box 

Mah Jongg Cards:

"Mah Jong playing cards" Happiness, 148c. 

麻雀纸牌, 囍, 148 副

The present deck of cards is a deck of cards for playing the game of Mahjong. Cards of this make have evidently been around for a long time,  This post by the knowledgable Tom Sloper https://www.sloperama.com/mjfaq/cards.htm - perhaps well over a decade old now- shows decks of Mahjong Cards that are very similar in design to this present deck. The present dc

Decks of mahjong playing cards have been featured previously in this blog. (See This, This, This ). In any case the deck featured here seems pretty rare now; Most decks are of the wider, 'poker' format that the previously featured decks belong to. 

The Suit of Coins. The Maker's Name (happiness)囍  is found in the middle of each card

As you can see, the cards here resemble physical mahjong tiles,  One unique feature of these cards is the use of Arabic numbers in the indices. This feature is never found in actual mahjong tilesets, save those intended for export. We presume these cards were also made for export too. 

The Suit of bamboos 

In the above-mentioned post by Tom Sloper, he advises people to purchase several decks of cards, as they are inevitably misprinted. This does not appear to be true any more. Aside from the odd smudge, the cards are well-printed on nice smooth cardboard. The problems of length and misalignment are no longer evident. 

The Suit of Myriads. 

Nonetheless, these Cards, or Kards (as Sloper calls them to avoid confusion with a piece of equipment used in the American game of mahjong) are still fairly cheap.  The author purchased a ten such decks for 20 Chinese Yuan, which in 2020 is about 2USD. Evidently Mr. Sloper's supplier was making a huge profit off these decks. 

The 'Honours'.  The Three cards on the left are what are called in the west the "Dragons". Rather curiously their indices do not display the conventional western names of as Red, White and Green dragon (Left to right) , but rather romanisations of their Chinese names, viz:

中 = Chung (now usually spelt Zhong)
白= Pai (Now usually spelt Bai)
發 = Fa  (Still spelt Fa)

Even more interestingly, the four 'wind' cards ( the group in the middle,)are annotated in english, to whit, North, South, East and West. The card labelled "K" is a Joker; The Chinese character 皇 on it signifies "Emperor" or "King", hence the index. 

The flowers

Readers should note that despite having 148 cards, the present deck cannot be used to play Singaporean/Malaysian -style Mahjong. The Singaporean deck has 12 flowers instead of the 8 here; The extra 4 depict a cat, a rat, a chicken and a centipede respectively. 

The Box

二八杠 Two-Eight Gang

This is a simple Chinese game. Its name is Er Ba Gang-- Two-Eight Gang. [[ It is sometimes known as Kuangfeng Paijiu 瘋狂牌九 -- Crazy Pai gow or Tui Tongzi 推筒子-- Pushing "Coins" ( as in the suit of mahjong)

Descriptions are sketchy, but the game is simple enough to reconstruct. My primary source is the Chinese Baidu article An article which describes a similar game, Er-Ba-Gang has also proved invaluable

Equipment: All the tiles from the  suit of "Coins" from a mahjong deck, plus the four white Dragons.  The complete "deck" thus contains 40 tiles.
Makers of mahjong equipment sell sets of majhong tiles that are of the above composition.
  If you do not have such a deck, you can make one using western playing cards. Take the ranks of Ace-Nine in all four suits, then add the four jacks to represent the white Dragons

  A pair of dice is also needed, to determine the deal, as described below.

Players
Players compete against a banker. The sources state either two or three players against a banker.

Staking
Players stake money into a pool. Spectators can evidently bet on the game as well.

Deal
Two cards are dealt at a time. The first The baidu article describes how this is done.  The banker throws two dice. He inspects the number they produce.
The banker deals the first pair to himself if the dice produce 5 or  9
The banker deals the first pair to himself  Player  1 if the dice produce   2, 6, 10
The banker deals the first pair to himself  Player  2 if the dice produce 2 3, 7, 11
The banker deals the first pair to himself  Player  3 if the dice produce 3 4, 8, 12

Play
Players expose their tiles.  They compare it with the banker. If their hand is greater than the banker's (as determined below) they win . The converse is true, If they tie [...]

Scoring 

In summary, the rule is as follows
1. Pairs outrank all hands. A pair of White dragons ( B)  is the highest, followed by the numbers, in descending numerical order.

2. When a hand is not a pair, its value is dictated by the sum of its components, modulo 10 The white dragon counts as zero. Thus, a hand of 8,9 Scores Seven, and a hand of 7,3 counts as Zero.

3. With hands that are of the same sum, the highest ranked hand is the Natural number plus a white dragon. So between 5,B and 3,2 the 5,B wins.

4.When white dragons are not involved, the hand that contains the higher card wins. So between the hands 9,6 and 2,3 (both hands score 5) the former wins

The Chinese sources provide a scoring chart, listing the ranks of all 81 possible hands.


Notes

It appears that this game may be played with Chinese Dominoes. The game also bears similarities to Koo Kiew and Daun Tiga. 

Doll cards part 2: Rules of the game

Doll cards part 2: The game

The admirable website of Andy Polett has this to say about the game played with the cards:

Practically nothing is known about the game played with these cards, still in production, although their use today seems restricted to very limited parts of the country.

 Mr. Polett is not alone in his ignorance. Even in the Chinese literature, precious little has been written on the game. I have only succeeded in finding three descriptions of the game played with the cards. They are

1: The Chinese Baidu article
2: In a response to a question about these cards on the website iask.sina.com (See Here )
3: In a response to a question about these cards on the website zhidao.baidu.com ( See Here) 

This is what I have been able to make of the three sources. The sources might describe regional variants of the game, which I might conflate. Likewise, my less-than-perfect Chinese skills might cause misinterpretations. With those caveats in place, let us proceed. 


I) Deck : One deck of Wawa pai.
If you do not have such a deck, you can make one using four decks of western playing-cards.
I  choose to represent the Eight Chinese characters of the phrase by the letters A- H and the Dolly card as a "J". The "Marked" cards are represented with an asterisk; so the marked 福 (A) is 福* (A*)

II) Players
The game can be played by three or four people. In the case of a 4 player game, the dealer sits out of each round. The role of dealer rotates between players.  However, in one variant ( from the baidu ask), all four players can participate
In any case, one of the players is designated the "banker", and the others play against him.

III) Deal 
As mentioned above, the dealer sits out of each round. He deals 18 cards to the banker, and 17 cards to the rest of the players. Source (3) states a slightly different procedure. After the cards are

IV)Melds
The only acceptable melds are threes-of-a-kind ( three copies of the same card) and fours of-a kind.
So, for instance 福福福 [ AAAA] is acceptable, as is 山山山山. [HHHH]

However the sequence of cards 壽比南山 [ABCD] is Not an acceptable meld, despite being half of the whole phrase. Neither is any fragment of the phrase, like  比南山 [FGH]

V) Declarations 
Before play begins, players make declarations. If a player has a four-of-a-kind in his hand, he places these cards on the table. He then draws a card from the stock. If that card is of the same kind as the one that made the four-of-a-kind, he adds it to the meld, and draws another. The process is repeated until the card can no longer be added to the meld.

VI)Play 
The sources say Play is similar to Mahjong. From this, I infer the following description of play.

 The banker starts play by discarding an unwanted card. The next player can either capture it to make a meld. If a meld is thus formed, then the player who created the meld must place it on the table.
If the cards cannot be melded, the second player must draw a card from the stock instead. [ if no melds are so declared, ] that player finishes his turn by making a discard.

If a trio is found in hand, one is under no obligation to declare it. However, If a four-of-a-kind is formed, the rules mentioned in "Declarations" take effect.

The process repeats with the next player. One can only capture discards from the previous player. By contrast, in mahjong  one may capture discards "Out of turn" .


VII) Winning
is identical to mahjong. In other words, the entire hand must consist of sets of three or more of the same subject, plus a pair of extra cards. One is dealt 18 cards, but a winning hand contains 19 cards. The extra card is procured by capturing another's discard, or by drawing from the stock.

If the stock runs out, and no-one manages to win, then the pointscore of the cards the players possess (as melds, be they declared on undeclared) is counted, and whoever has the higher score wins.

VIII) Scoring 
This part I find the most uncertain.  I will split them according to the Source.

Source (1) states that the scoring works on a card-by-card basis.

If there are no combinations of cards (see below) , the score is reckoned thus: Each plain card in a meld scores 10; Each stamped card in a meld scores 20.
(若没有任何牌型的平胡，则无”坨“的牌每张10胡，有”坨“的牌每张20胡计分)

Like many Chinese games, certain combinations of cards allow the player's score to be multiplied. The combinations are thus listed by source (1)

a) Collecting melds ( see ss. IV)  that when put together make up the phrase 福 如 東 海 or  壽 比 南 山 , plus having a pair of dolly cards. This doubles the score. 

Sample hand: 福福福福 壽壽壽, 比 比 比 , 南南南, 山山山山 plus two dolly cards.
[AAAA EEE FFF GGG HHHH JJ].
In this case

b) "Big dolly sings on stage"  All the melds involved in the winning hand contain a marked card, plus a pair of Dolly cards. 

c)  Vertical letter Shu Xin ( according to baidu article ). All the melds involved in the winning hand do not contain marked cards, plus a pair of Dolly cards.

Source (1) does not speak about how the combinations "Stack up".  For instance, if a hand fulfills conditions (a) and (b)? If the scoring is identical to mahjong, this means the score is quadrupled.

_______

Source (3) speaks of a slightly different set of rules. Instead of going on a card-by-card basis, the scoring is on a meld-by-meld basis. A meld consisting of only plain cards scores 10, and a meld that involves a stamped card score 20. The source also seems to say only four-of-a-kinds are acceptable.

Returning to the sample hand, source (1) will reckon its score 190x2=180 points. Source 3 will reckon its score as 50 x 2=100 points, assuming it did recognize three-of-a-kinds. 

To make a substitute. 

If you do not have access to a deck of Wawa pai, you can make one from eight decks of wstern playing-cards.  Extract the 1, 3, 5, and 7 in the black suits, and the 2, 4, 6, 8 in the red suits from all the decks.  These represent the Characters of the Chinese deck. For the Dolly cards, extract the red Queens from all the decks.  For the cards that possess a stamp, mark the faces of one of the cards with a dot or similar mark. Alternately, you can extract Seven of the cards from a normal deck, and the eighth card from a large-index deck. 

Four Colour cards (4) Hokkien deck, "66888"

[Four Colour cards ]. “May you Prosper! Prosper! Strike it rich!" 6688" 112c. "Prosper",   Fujian, China.
[四色牌]，"祝你們旺！旺！發！ 6688" 112副， “旺”， 福建

Yet another deck of four-colour cards. This one was purchased in 2019, from a shop in Fujian, China.  These cards are of the same sort as the "Hokkien" deck featured previously. (The name "Hokkien" is the Hokkien pronunciation of the Mandarin Fujian 福建 )

For other examples of the Four Colour Cards, see Here:  and Here

The Red and Yellow suits. 

From Left to right (Both rows)

General, Valet, Minister, Chariot, Horse, Cannon, Soldier 

As you can see, the basic shape of the cards has remained more or less the same. However, the cards are surprisingly small. Each card is about 2 cm wide and 5.5 cm long. 

The card with rank 'general' (Leftmost card) has the character "Wang" 旺-- "Prosper" -- written in the middle. The maker is not explicitly mentioned in the deck, so we presume this character is either the maker's mark, or perhaps a wish of good luck. 

The cards are printed on a cardboard. Their fronts are glossy, but the backs are left plain and untreated. Nonetheless, the cards are surprisingly slippery. 

The Green and White suits-

From Left to Right: General, Valet, Elephant, Chariot, Horse, Cannon, Soldier 

In the Red and Yellow suits, the third rank is written as "Minister". In the Green and white suits, it is written as " Elephant" This sounds odd, until you notice the two words sound the same in Mandarin (Xiang)

Anyway, observant readers would have noticed the cards have a black border, into which is cut some lines, circles or notches. This is the "Index" system of the cards. Although the previously featured Hokkien deck did not have it, a deck in the British Museum in the late 19th century has such a feature https://archive.org/stream/aen4312.0001.001.umich.edu#page/186/mode/2up  That deck was collected in "Foochow" = Fuzhou.  However,  there are several differences between the indices in the two decks, as seen below. 

BM signifies the British Museum deck, FJ signifies the present deck. The British museum book called the chess pieces by a rather unusual set of names-- it seemed to refer to the "Valet" as a "Queen" and the "Elephant" as the "Bishop" 

The wrapper of the cards. The cards are sold in lots of 10 decks, wrapped thus. 

Transcription:

祝你们旺！旺！發！

66888

Zu nimen Wang! Wang! Fa!

66888 

Translation: "May you Prosper! Prosper! Strike it rich!" 66888. 

The first notable feature of this pack is the writing. The character for "Strike it rich" 發 is written in traditional Chinese; the rest are written in simplified Chinese. 

The second notable feature is the string of numbers 66888. The word for "Six" sounds very similar to the word for "go smoothly".The word for Eight sounds very similar to the word 發-- to strike it rich (The pun is almost perfect in Cantonese). As a result, the string of numbers are a wish that people who play with these cards will easily strike it rich. 

***

In some parts of China, people take these playing cards, and fold them into el;aborate creations, like shapes of fruit, miniature houses, and even vases,  as can be seen in this google search 四色牌折纸. 

Here are two youtube videos of news clips from Taiwan, showing more of this remarkable art. 

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chSQMnGQfj0

This is a short clip of an old granny in Taiwan who  is skilled in the craft. This shows how the creations are put together-- by carefully folding each individual card, and joining the folded cards to a larger shape. The narrator states each card takes around seven seconds to fold, but a single creation involves hundreds of cards. 

A brief note of the cards featured in the video. They have several differences with the deck shown here. Most notable is the shape of the cards ( slightly longer than the ones here), and that the Yellow suit has the characters printed in Red, rather than black ink. 

This second video is also from Taiwan, but is slightly longer (eight minutes) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrvjISJkxyo 

It is in the Hakka language, but it is subtitled in Chinese characters. Below is a summary of the video:

- The cards are sometimes called 挷胡子-- (Bang huzi in Mandarin; the Hakka pronunciation of these characters is different) 

- The game is fast dying out in Taiwan. It is usually played by the elderly. The youth have taken to playing at Mahjong and Poker. 

-  Large supplies of the cards are easily available, as a deck is typically thrown away after a game. 

- The video interviews a couple, 巫裕豐 and his wife  邱碧梅, whose hobby is making such creations. (The Mandarin pronunciation of their names is Mr. WU Yufeng and Ms. QIU Bimei)

- Mr. Wu is an auto mechanic by trade. He exhibits his creations besides his workshop. He considers making such models more intellectually stimulating than making cars. 

- The video shows whole chairs and tables large enough to sit upon made from the cards. Such a set took about 6 months to make, and involved over a hundred thousand cards. 

- A model of a large house took 3000 cards to make,

- even the simplest creations take several days; large ones can take over a year 

- The couple make elaborate articulated creations from the cards. 

***

The author wishes his readers a Happy New Year, and 2020 will be as prosperous and plentiful for them as the deck promises.