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.  

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.

拾
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?

貫

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. 

束

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. 

Doll cards 娃兒牌 Part 1: The Cards

We now come to a kind of playing card, which is vanishingly rare. Used in Sichuan, it bears the name of  娃娃牌"Wawa pai"- Doll cards  or 娃兒牌 " Wa'er pai" -- Dolly cards.

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:

Note; there are two ways of writing the sentence, in Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Traditional Chinese is used in the Catalog, Simplified in the cards featured below.

 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. 

Character cards

Suliao Zipai (Plastic Character cards), Xin Bin ,  80+1c,
 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: 

 底=Soko (Japanese) = Tai (Cantonese)= Di (Mandarin)= Bottom
換= Kan (Japanese) = Oon (Cantonese) = Huan (Mandarin) = Switch

Cards that possess the extra bottom/switch card now seem to be quite rare. 

Four suited money cards 1: Kitty cards (MaoMao pai)

[Kitty cards], Jingzhong Tianzi No. 2065 , 36c.
[貓貓牌] 進忠天子 No. 2065, 36副
These cards were made in Chongzhou , Sichuan.
There is almost no information about this deck online. The Chinese wikipedia article considers this deck to be a kind of Six Tiger card, which comes from Chongzhou, Sichuan. I have doubts if the cards are actually used to play the game of 'six tigers'. However, there is nothing in the structure of the deck that prevents you from doing so. The name literally translates as 'kitty cards'. Before you ask, yes, Doggy cards do exist.

The suit of tens 拾. 

The first thing to note about the cards, is their central illustration. Each card has  rather elegant line drawing of a flower. The suit-symbols of the cards are less stylized than other cards of their family; they still bear some resemblance to the normal forms of the chinese numerals. 

The card labelled '1' in the above illustration seems to have the inscription 歪子- "Slanted child"

That card has the maker's telephone number on it 

The suit of 贯, or Guan

Note the red mark on the Nine of each suit. 

The suit of 索, or strings. 

The suit- character is so stylized the author cannot identify it with certainty. 

The suit of cash, or 钱. 

The character has been abbreviated to 戋, the right-hand portion of the full character. 

The card labelled 1 seems to be the ace in this suit, but the author cannot identify it with certainty. Like the card in the suit of tens, it has the maker's telephone number written on it. The deck featured on the Chinese wiki article has a maker's name in its stead.  The maker's name is Wang Yi 王亿. From an examination of the deck, we find it is identical to the present deck, the maker's name excepted. 

Joss paper Mahjong

華雅麻將, 144c.
Haoya Majiang ("Luxurious Mahjong")144c.

Now, a set of playing-cards with a difference. This is a mahjong set, purchased in 2018 in Singapore. However, The author remembers such sets being produced around the year 2014, which he subsequently lost.

 Unlike most mahjong sets, this is not intended for the living. It is rather intended for the dead. This majhong set is an example of "Joss paper", paper objects intended to be burnt as offerings to the ancestors and spirits.

Effort has not been spared in the production of such an ephemeral set. Each "tile" is a small box made of folded card. Becuase they are made of printed paper,  the manufacturer can be more creative in designing the tiles.

There are 144 tiles in total, but their distrubution is extremely erratic. A standard set of mahjong tiles has exactly 4 copies of each tile, but in this set, some tiles can have as few as 2 copies and others as many as 6. The exact distribution is as follows:

Rank Suit	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
萬 Myriads	3	6	2	2	4	5	7	4	2
竹 Bamboos	2	5	7	3	4	5	5	2	2
筒 Coins	6	6	4	3	3	3	5	3	4
Other cards
中· Red Dragon	白 White Dragon	發 Green Dragon	東 East	南 South	西 West	北 North	花 Flowers
2	9	5	3	4	3	3	8

The Suit of coins. From Right to left, the 1-9 of coins . The furthest tile on the left is the 白板, Bai ban ( lit "White board")  conventionally known as the White dragon in English. 

 Because the tiles are small boxes of printed paper, the manufacturer can make them much fancier than the ordinary sort. Note the small coloured border surrounding each of the tiles-- Engraving such a border on each tile would be prohibitively expensive. 

The Suit of Bamboos. From Right to left, the 1-9 of bamboos. The 1 of bamboos is a bird.  The furthest tile on the left is the 红中 , Hong Zhong, Literally Red Center, conventionally known as the Red dragon in English. 

The 1 of bamboos is depicted as a scarlet Macaw. Compare this with the much more stylized versions found Here and here and Here. Apart from that, the bamboos look much like those on convntional decks

 The Suit of Myriads. From Right to left, the 1-9 of myriads  
The furthest tile on the left is the 青發, Qing fa, Literally Green prosperity, conventionally known as the green dragon in English. 

Top Row: Flowers (1) : L-R Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter

Middle row - Flowers (2) -- L-R Plum, Orchid, Chrysanthemum, and bamboo

Bottom row: The Winds - L-R East, South, West, North

Most Mahjong sets contain 'Flowers" These are extra tiles, which act as bonuses.The medium of printing offers a further opportunity for elaboration, with gaudy stockart replacing the stylized flowers of ordinary sets. 

Note the fancy rainbow effect on the winds. (bottom row). Most sets of mahjong cards (intended for actual use as opposed to an offering) follow the tiles very closely, even though (as we can see here) it is easy for fancy effects to be made in printing. Perhaps because it is precisely because it is an offering, that the makers can get away with making it so gaudy. 

The above two images show the box the tiles come in , with and without the lid. Like the tiles themselves, the box is made of paper, and intended to be burnt along with the tiles. 

The manufacturer has also provides some paper jetons and a wind indicator, along with a pair of dice (also of paper).

In addition to the mahjong set, a box of playing-cards is provided for the added amusement of the spirits. Alas, the box is empty, and contains no cards. 

From the side, it is easy to see how the tiles are constructed-- Small boxes of paper. You can also see the yellow-coloured backs of the tiles. Prior to the invention of plastic, majhong tiles were made of bone laminated to bamboo. The yellow colour represents the bamboo. Plastic tiles also have this feature-- their backs are of a different colour than their faces.