my playing card collection
Chinese Suits
"Wilkinson suggests that the first cards may have been actual paper currency which were both the tools of gaming and the stakes being played for, as in trading card games. The designs on modern Mahjong tiles likely evolved from those earliest playing cards. However, it may be that the first deck of cards ever printed was a Chinese domino deck, in whose cards all 21 combinations of a pair of dice are depicted. In Kuei-t'ien-lu, a Chinese text redacted in the 11th century, domino cards were printed during the Tang Dynasty, contemporary to the first printed books.
The Chinese word pái 牌 is used to describe both paper cards and gaming tiles."
Chinese playing card
dated c.1400 AD, Ming Dynasty, found near Turpan, 9.5 by 3.5 cm.
Domino cards
China; late 19th century
Woodblock prints, ink and color on paper; 8.5 x 2.2 cm each
American Museum of Natural History, 1/2368
Photo by Chris Chesek
There seem to have been four types of Chinese playing cards
钱卡 Money suited cards
(qian ka) Examples are Hakka cards used in Luk Fu (六虎 or "Six Tigers"). These decks have 38 cards in four suits: coins, strings, myriads and tens (a myriad is 10,000).
Ceki cards used in south east Asia are another example.
四色牌 Four Colour cards
(si se pai) Also known as Chinese Chess, is a very popular game of the rummy family of card games, with a relatively long history in China. A standard deck consists of 112 cards, divided into four colors, 28 cards each, depicting the seven Chinese chess pieces.
多米诺卡 Domino cards
(duo mi nuo ka) The deck consists of 21 individual cards, each repeated 4 times, making for a total of 84 cards.
字牌 Character cards
(zi ka) The deck is made of a fixed set of 80 numbered cards and a variable number of special loose cards (one, or five, or more, when present), according to the pattern and to the edition.