Betting the Family Jewels--China's Gambling Legacy

Writer Szu-ma Chung-yuan notes that Chinese make much of the "art" of gambling: "Latin Americans stress speed in gambling, by flipping open a calendar and betting whether the day will be even or odd, or guessing which bowl a piece of gold is under. Their style of gambling, where the result is seen in a flash, doesn't appeal to the Chinese, who want an extended process and have come up with all sorts of gambling games and paraphernalia to satisfy their yearning."

The literati gambled over chess, and drank a cup of wine if they lost, giving their gambling a more distinguished style. （photo of the Sung dynasty painting Eighteen Scholars courtesy of the National Palace Museum）

e, blocks and tiles

Looking for the origins of Chinese gambling, The Encyclopedia of Chinese Folk Art follows the main stream of dice and the tributaries of poem blocks and card games.

Legend has it that Tsao Chih invented dice during the Three Kingdoms era. By the Sui and Tang dynasties they already looked much as they do today. In order to make full use of dice, the ancient Chinese invented all variety of gambling games. Many of these were games like Monopoly, played on boards arrayed with squares of different themes, among the most popular of which were court ministers, or gods and immortals, or famous mountains and rivers. What a merry time folks would have playing!

Shihpai--or poem blocks--were originally used in verse-making games by Tang and Sung dynasty literati. When literary friends got together, they'd each pick squares with characters carved in them and use them as the basis for writing their own poems. It was educational, a way of improving their literary skills through exposure to each other's talents. When a good poem was written, they would bring out the booze and toast. The game had more the character of entertainment than gambling.

During the Sung dynasty, these poem blocks would be combined with dice to form "Hsuan Ho Squares," a game played with 32 tiles that was created during the second year of Hsuan Ho's rule. On either side of the tile were the numbers of dice-- from 1 to 6--and they came in various different suits, such as earth, water, fire and wind; dragon, silkworm, fish and phoenix; sun, moon, stars and clouds; children and old folks, etc. These were accompanied by Tang poems that were matched with small drawings. The game was said to be a lot of fun. When passed down to the common people, it proved to be the inspiration for the paraphernalia of the Chinese gambling table and eventually Mahjongg.

The ancient Chinese called card games "yehtzu hsi" (leaf games). They were very popular during the middle of the Tang dynasty. By the Sung and Ming dynasties, these developed into "matiao pai," which was played by four people. In the Ming dynasty book Jih Chih Lu, Ku Ting-lin describes how the officials at court would play the game night and day. To add interest, the 36 hero-bandits in the novel All Men are Brothers also became a theme of the card game. Weirder still, at the end of the Ming dynasty, fictitious bandits with the characters Chuang or Hsien in their names frequently appeared on the face of cards. Not long afterwards, the country was thrown into chaos during the rebellion of Chang Hsien-chung and the "Chuang King" Li Tzu-cheng. The cards seemed to predict the fate of the nation.

Onwards and upwards to Mahjongg

The gambling wisdom that the Chinese have acquired over the ages pleases them no end, and the more they play the more addicted they become. Each generation makes its own improvements. During the Ching dynasty, in the area around Yangzhou and the Huai River, the salt traders took to playing cards when there was no work to be done. But because of the local accent, when "matiao" crossed the Yangtze River, it became called "machueh," which means sparrow.

Yin Teng-kuo, who writes about folk customs, says that Mahjongg dates back to May and June of 1840, when it was invented by Chen Cheng-lun from Ningpo.

At that time, the Opium War between the Chinese and British had just broken out, and Chen was organizing the local militia. In order to keep the fishermen at home and off the seas, and thus ready to fight at any time, he made improvements on machueh, turning it into mahjongg. This game, which so deftly combined the best features of dice and tile games, quickly spread all over to become China's national gambling game.

"Among meats," the saying goes, "pork is the best; cabbage is the most fragrant of all vegetables; the gun is the master of all weapons; and mahjongg the king of gambling games." One might describe mahjongg as the ultimate crystallization of the art and wisdom of Chinese gambling. Szu-ma Chung-yuan explains the "red center," the "white board" and the four directions of wind that are mahjongg tiles: "When one's mind is above board and open to the white light, and you're smack dab at the center of a red hot streak, then you'll make a fortune whichever direction the wind blows."

Winning big

Gambling has its sedentary and active incarnations. For the former, which includes Chinese chess and mahjongg, one needn't work up a sweat. For the latter, you've got to rely on physical exertion. But for both, as Szu-ma Chung-yuan has explained, "competition and gambling are inextricably linked."

You can gamble on chess or on Mahjongg, but for some this kind of sedentary competition isn't stimulating enough, and so physical competitions such as lion dancing, ball games, dragon boat racing and kungfu competitions have all become scenes of gambling. While the competitors are perspiring on the field of play, the audience will be placing bets and noisily supporting them on the sidelines. And if such sports get too rough for human competitors, you can always bring in the animals.

In the fall in ancient Mongolia, when the horses were fat and the grass was tall, the twelve tribes would hold horsemanship competitions. "Those watching the competition were more enthusiastic than those competing," Szu-ma Chung-yuan says. "While the contestants were battling on the field, the people were placing their bets all around them." Competitions with animals were a common feature of our ancestors' lives. In Yiwu of Zhejiang, and in the mountains of southwest China where the Miao, Yao and Li peoples lived, bull fighting was also very popular. "Wherever there's a winner and loser, you can gamble."

Gamblers who haven't enjoyed the heavy panting of big animals, have turned to birds and bugs. Over the course of Chinese gambling history, cock fighting, cricket fighting, quail fighting and pigeon racing all have seen periods of popularity.

In his book Compulsive Gambling, Yin Teng-kuo points out that cock fighting has a long history in China. King Hsuan of Chou kept a cock fighting trainer in his palace to help his birds' chances. In the Tang dynasty, the entire capital city of Changan--all the way from the emperor, nobility and wealthy families down to the lower classes-- was cock-fighting crazy. People would lose family fortunes on it. Once a youth of just 13 or 14 named Chia Chang was even given an important position by the emperor because he was particularly good at raising fighting cocks.

Cricket fighting at one time was also popular among Chinese gamblers. In Tang-dynasty Changan the wealthy would keep their crickets in cages of carved ivory, and they would bet huge sums on them when they fought. Before the Southern Sung dynasty fell to the Mongolians, Prime minister Chia Szu-tao was known as the "cricket minister" because his captivation with the pastime led him to neglect the affairs of state. In the Ching dynasty, most of the Manchurian nobility were similarly hooked. There are records of the emperor Chien Lung scolding bankrupt noblemen punters before giving them funds from the national treasury. In the film The Last Emperor, the child emperor kept crickets as pets.

Games to play

There are all sorts of Chinese gambling--the kinds where you lose the family fortune and the kinds that are just a leisurely form of entertainment. As long as it doesn't sap your ambitions, play! As Confucius said, "Eating all day, without putting your heart in anything, makes for a hard life. Better even to be a gambler--at least they show some enthusiasm."

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At the lunar New Year ever since the Sung dynasty, it has been traditional to lift the ban on gambling "out of regard for the feelings of the people." Many new year's scrolls depict scenes of gambling. (rephotographed from Chinese Popular Prints)

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The literati gambled over chess, and drank a cup of wine if they lost, giving their gambling a more distinguished style. (photo of the Sung dynasty painting Eighteen Scholars courtesy of the National Palace Museum)