Catalogue of the collection of playing cards bequeathed to the Trustees of the British museum by the late Lady Charlotte Schreiber.

CHINESE CARDS.

189

given on the I, I, - 2 and 4. In a Chungking pack [No. 7] the style
(Ch'ing Ch'en Chai, —" Nest of Pure Officials ") is on the bordered X.
Certain cards bear besides inscriptions of two or three characters,
as on Old Thousand [No. 22], "to all under heaven, peace in the highest."
Others [Nos. 17 and 23] carry a couplet on the Old Thousand. The suit
of myriads is almost invariably marked by grotesquely drawn heads,
which are said to be those of celebrated gamblers. The names for some
of them [see Nos. 16, 20, 29] seem fairly constant (the 7 is Ch'in Ming,
the 9 Lei or Lei Weng, the 4 Tza Chin), others, like the 3 (Ta Li or
Kwan Sheng) are variously given. One pack [No. 29] is marked in this
way throughout. Behind these uncouth names must be hidden a sheaf
of old-time stories, some forgotten, others recoverable by wide and patient
inquiry. There is always difficulty, however, in ferreting out information
concerning Chinese playing cards, as the literary class affect to despise
them —while freely using thelm-and there is, it would seem, no native
memoir on the subject.
The last peculiarity to be noted here is the employment in most
Chinese games of certain additional cards, which have no suit or value of
their own, but can be used to take the place of any one card required,
much as in Primero the knave of hearts " might be made any card or
suit" (Cavendish, Card Essays). These are known to the Chinese as
" golds," being originally two extra suit cards distinguished by a blot of
gold, or by the word gold impressed upon them [see No. 13]. They will
be described here as atouts or jokers. In one Khanhoo pack from Foochow
[No. 20] there are only the original two of these; another similar pack
from Peking [No. 19] contains six. Two chess packs (from Canton and
Swatow, Nos. 10, 11) and one fine Khanhoo pack [No. 22] have five each:
in this case the Five Blessings, Posterity, Promotion, Long Life, Happiness, and Wealth, a curious parallel to the naibis or emblematic cards of
mediaeval Italian packs. A domino pack (bone tablets, No. 2) from
Ningpo has six blanks, serving much the same purpose; another from
Shanghai (pasteboard, No. 3) has three.
To take now the several packs [Nos. 1-33] in order:
1. Cards derived from Dice.
i. T'ienkiu (Tenquew): " Heavens and Nines [No. 1].
Pack No. 1. In a tin box, containing 32 dominoes (cards), namely
two each of the eleven " civilians" (page 2, supra), and one each of the
ten "military." The name is derived from the highest obtainable
quartette, viz., a, e-, 4, - (e.g., "heavens," 6, and "nines," or ).
[Note.-The method of play in this and the following games, though
highly interesting, is omitted in this paper, which is confined to a description of the cards themselves.]