CHINESE GAMES WITH DICE AND DOMINOES
Stewart Culin
Director, Museum of Archaeology and Paleontology,
University of Pennsylvania
This paper appeared in the Annual Report of the US
National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, for the year ending June 30, 1893,
pages 491-537. It included 45 illustrations. While the text primarily concerns
Dice and Dominoes, there is also considerable information about Backgammon and
Playing Cards. In addition to information about these games as played by people
in China and the Chinese in the US at the time, information about
related games in Korea, Japan, Siam, India, and elsewhere are also included in
this "report". Culin introduced the paper with the following comments.
This paper,1
of which a preliminary study was printed in 1889,2
is the first of a series on Chinese games, to be continued by similar accounts
of playing cards and chess. It has been considerably extended, through recent
studies in connection especially with the collection gathered by the author in
the Anthropological Building in Chicago, and that in the National Museum.3
The games described
are chiefly those of the Chinese laborers in America, a limitation found as
acceptable as it is necessary, since even among these people, who all came from
a comparatively small area, there exist variations in the methods of gambling,
as well as in the terminology of their games. The latter is made up largely of
slang and colloquial words and presents many difficulties. The gamblers are
usually men of the most ignorant class, and those most familiar with the games
are often the least able to furnish correct Chinese transcriptions of the terms
employed in them, so that the task of interpretation would have been extremely
difficult but for the assistance received from Chinese and Japanese scholars.4
Following these comments, Culin presents detailed
descriptions of the equipment (many with illustrations) for over 30 games,
along with instructions for play. Some instructions are elaborate with
translations of the names of each "play" within a game. In describing some of
the games, he comments on their similarity to games in other countries during
this period in time. The following are a list of the games, using Culin's
organization of the information. Click on the topic of interest in the left panel.
Notes:
- This paper has been prepared at the request of the authorities of the US
National Museum, to illustrate a portion of its extensive a collection of
games.
- Chinese Games with Dice by Stewart Culin, read before The Oriental Club of
Philadelphia, March 14, 1889, Philadelphia, 1889, pp. 1-21.
- This collection, though the author modestly refrains from mentioning the
fact, owes much of its completeness to Mr. Culin's own generous
contributions. G. Brown Goode.
- The Chinese words printed in italics are transliterated according to Dr.
Williams' Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect,
Canton, 1856. Dr. Hepburn's Japanese-English Dictionary has been
followed for Japanese, and the Korean words, in the absence of any native
standard of orthography, and for the purpose of convenient reference, have
been made to accord with that admirable work, the Dictionnaire
Coréen-Français, Yokohama, 1880.
