Showing posts with label chess. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chess. Show all posts

Wednesday, 22 May 2019

Four colour cards [3] Guangshui Cards

[four colour cards] Anon, 112c, China
《四色牌》112副
This deck comes from Guangshui, 廣水 a city in Hubei 湖北,

The red and white suits. The first thing to note is the form the characters take. They have become extremely stylized. My transcriptions into standard font are seen below, as well as their English equivalents. As for the Valet and Soldier, I am not certain about their identification, and they may have been transposed. 
The backs of the cards (A) are plain, grey cardboard. Note, that in the white suit the cards have a small tinge of red on their narrow edge. 

The green and Yellow suit. For a comparison, see here,"Hokkien"  "Double Phoenix" and  Singaporean  Cards. 
Note that all the characters in the four suits are identical in this deck. 

The Chinese Wikipedia has an Article about the cards, and the game played with them. 

Monday, 7 April 2014

Travelling chinese chess/xiangqi set

[Magnetic chess set], 31/32 pieces.
( For a more thorough description of a Chinese chess set, see http://anthonylesq.blogspot.sg/2013/07/chinese-chessxiangqi-set-butterfly-brand.html)

  The following magnetic Chinese chess set is extremely small, ( roughly 12x6 cm). This set is probably intended to be portable, as evidenced by it's small size, and the fact that the chessboard also doubles as a storage container for the chess pieces.  The pieces are magnetic, a necessity at this small scale.



A picture of the board. Note the missing green pawn. Unlike the "butterfly brand" chess set, this set uses red and green to distinguish the sides.
A closeup of the pieces. Unlike the butterfly brand set, the characters for the "cannon" pieces are written differently for opposing sides; 炮 for red, and 砲 for green. The characters for the "valet" pieces are also written differently, 仕 for red, and 士 for green.