page_title: Chinese playing cards
section_title: Money-suited cards
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese playing cards / Money-suited cards
caption_attribution_description: 中文（台灣）‎: 山東濰坊楊家埠的水滸牌。
context_page_description: Playing cards were most likely invented in China during the Southern Song dynasty. They were certainly in existence by the Mongol Yuan dynasty. Chinese use the word pái, meaning "plaque", to refer to both playing cards and tiles. Many early sources are ambiguous, and do not specifically refer to paper pái or bone pái. In terms of game play, however, there is no difference; both serve to hide one face from the other players with identical backs. Card games are examples of imperfect information games as opposed to Chess or Go.
  Many western scholars, like William Henry Wilkinson, Stewart Culin, Thomas F. Carter, and Michael Dummett attribute to the Chinese the invention of playing cards. Michael Dummett also contends that the concept of suits and the idea of trick-taking games were invented in China. Trick-taking games eventually became multi-trick games. These then evolved into the earliest type of rummy games during the eighteenth century. By the end of the monarchy, the vast majority of traditional Chinese card games were of the draw-and-discard or fishing variety. Chinese playing cards have proliferated into Southeast Asia by Chinese immigrants.
context_section_description: Money-suited cards have attracted the most attention from scholars. They are considered to be the ancestors of most of the world's playing cards. Each suit represents a different unit of currency. Lu Rong (1436–1494) described a four-suited 38-card deck:
  Cash or Coins: 1 to 9 Cash
  Strings of Cash: 1 to 9 Strings
  Myriads of Strings: 1 to 9 Myriad
  Tens of Myriads: 20 to 90 Myriad, Hundred Myriad, Thousand Myriad, and Myriad Myriad (11 cards in total)
  There is no 10 Myriad card as it would share the same name as its suit. By the late 16th-century, the suit of Cash added two more cards: Half Cash and Zero Cash. The Cash suit was also in reverse order with the lower number cards beating the higher. This feature also appeared in other early card games like Ganjifa, Tarot, Ombre, and Maw. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the suit of Myriads and Tens depicted characters from the novel the Water Margin which is why they were also called Water Margin cards. They were also known as Madiao cards after one of the most popular games. The suits of Cash and Strings derive their pips from early Chinese banknotes. Some cards, most commonly the highest and lowest of each suit, will have a red stamp mimicking banknote seals. On both ends of some decks are markings that serve as indices to let players fan their cards.
  From at least the 17th-century, games played with stripped decks became more popular. This was done by removing the suit of Tens save for the Thousand Myriad as in the game of Khanhoo. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Thousand Myriad, Half Cash, and Zero Cash took on new identities as the suitless Old Thousand, White Flower, and Red Flower respectively. They are sometimes joined by a "Ghost" card. The Myriad Myriad card disappeared by the late 19th century. During the Qing dynasty, draw-and-discard games became more popular and the 30-card deck was often multiplied with each card having two to five copies. Jin Xueshi noted that the three-suited decks were ten times more popular than four-suited ones prior to 1783, a disparity which has since significantly increased. Mahjong, which also exists in card format, was derived from these types of games during the middle of the 19th century.
  Four-suited decks still exist and are used by the Hakka to play Six Tigers, a multi-trick game. Six Tigers decks lack illustrations and instead just have ideograms of the rank and suit of each card. Another structurally similar deck is Bài Bất found in Vietnam; its three-suit version is Tổ tôm. These Vietnamese cards were redesigned by Camoin of Marseilles during French colonial rule to depict people wearing traditional Japanese costumes from the Edo period.
  Direct foreign derivatives include Bài chòi in Vietnam, Pai Tai in Thailand, and Cheki in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Korean Tujeon cards were possibly a descendant. Ultimately, all four-suited decks (especially Italian and Spanish suited packs) are indirectly descended from the money-suited system through Mamluk Kanjifa.
caption: Three-suited Water Margin deck, markings on ends serve as indices.
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