Chinese archaic

Assessment

Confidence

documented a published ruleset or rule description exists and is cited

Evidence

corroborated two or more independent sources agree on the facts that define this variant

Cross-comparison

What each source was read to say, set side by side. The numbers are the sources above.

• [1] listed as 'Chinese Archaic (1890 rules per Wilkinson)', matching the chart's date and attribution
• [2] Sloperama's early-forms table compares 1903 (Li), 1915 (Mauger), 1920s standard, 1920s 'New Method', Japanese Classical and HKOS against eight rule hallmarks; Chinese Archaic itself is not a column in that table
• [3] the collector behind this node: Sir William Henry Wilkinson, British sinologist and Consul-General in China and Korea from 1880 to 1918. His packs were procured during 1889-90 from Guangzhou, Shantou and Fuzhou in the south, Ningbo and Shanghai on the coast, Beijing in the north, Jiujiang and Yichang in mid-China and Chongqing in the far west. The collection is now in the British Museum
• [4] CONFIRMS THE DATE FROM ARTEFACTS: the characters 中發 appear on a box of precursor má qiǎo TILES collected by Wilkinson in 1889, donated to the British Museum as part of the Schreiber Collection. So Wilkinson's 1889-90 material is not only cards — tiles survive and are datable. It also cites an unpublished Wilkinson memorandum of 1925
• [1] the catalogue's full entry for CHINESE ARCHAIC (ca 1890), credited to Depaulis's reading of Wilkinson: 136 tiles, suit tiles and honours only, no flowers or seasons; hold 15 and go out on 15 'as in Khanhoo'; no special hands; score by counting 'tricks' (pongs, kongs and pairs) according to a 'tariff'; 'Sequences help towards filling a hand, but are not regarded as tricks, and score nothing'; points for going out not mentioned; four of one's own wind doubles 'stakes all round', or in some cases only the value of the holder's tricks. It adds that all players earning points is only inferred
• [5] PRIMARY, Wilkinson's own words: his 1893 exhibition catalogue, reprinted by Culin, files chung fat, 'Hit and go', as the third class of money-derived cards. 'As Lut chi is confined to the Hakka country of South China, so is Chung fat to the provinces of Chekiang and Kiangsu. It is usually, if not invariably, put up in tablet rather than pasteboard form. The method of play is analogous to "Khanhoo."' Set No. 43, from Ningpo: ace to 9 of cash, strings and myriads quadrupled, four each of East, West, North, South, chung and fat, and eight blanks — 140 tablets of bone with bamboo backs, the colouring 'purely ornamental'
• [5] the same catalogue gives the reference for 'Khanhoo' play as Wilkinson's own booklet, The Game of Khanhoo, London, Chas. Goodall & Son, 1891, and lists ma tseuk, 'hempen birds', as a name for the paper kwan p'ai cards, not for the tablets
• [6] Culin's Smithsonian report sets Wilkinson's Ningbo chung fa set beside Glover's Fuzhou set: 'nearly identical', but without the five direction rulers, the heaven, earth, man and harmony rulers and the seasons, and with four fat pieces. That is the exact difference between this node and its parent
• [7] quotes Wilkinson's 1890 manuscript through his 1925 memorandum: 'Chungfa. The game is one for four players, neither more nor less. These bear as names the points of the compass, the leader being east ... The same number of cards (viz. 15) is dealt to each player as in Khanhoo ... Sequences help towards filling a hand, but are not regarded as tricks, and score nothing. The tariff ... is not fixed, but is determined by the players before commencing.' Among the scoring melds is 'any 3 aces, or any 3 nines (not all of the same suit)', which Stanwick says makes this a precursor game-play, since mahjong has no mixed-suit set
• [8] the objects: Wilkinson's 1890 note says of chung fa 'my specimens ... came from Shanghai and Ningpo; they are of bone and ebony and bone and bamboo'. The Ningbo set is in the British Museum (1896,0501.904): 140 bone-and-ebony pieces in a box stamped 烏木 (ebony), 中發 ('hit & go') and 橫相 (transverse joint). Four of the blanks were used in play, so bai, fa and zhong 'formed a stable quadruplicated triad as early as 1889'. The 1893 exposition set, sent to the Penn Museum, has not been found there
• [4] Wilkinson's 1890 notes on names: 'Khanhoo cards are known in Hankow as 棍牌 (kunp'ai) or 麻雀 ma ch'üo', and 什胡 in Wenzhou is 'a generic term for ... "Khanhoo" cards, where there are four specimens of each card. Practically = 麻雀'. Of all the places he collected in, only Ningbo and Shanghai produced a tile set. The 'sparrow' name in 1890 belonged to the paper deck, and the tiles went by chung fa
• [9] the Depaulis-Tsui chart scores Wilkinson 1890 against the Late Qing novels (1892-1911): same on 'points first, then doubling', 'fewer or no special hands' and 'no flower tiles'; OPPOSITE on 'concealed sets rewarded more highly'; unknown on bonus for a win, a payoff structure set before the game, settlement between non-winners, and dealer paying and receiving double. Region of origin: Ningbo. The column's source is Wilkinson's 1925 memorandum, via Depaulis's rec.games.mahjong thread 'Mahjong rules... in 1890' (4 December 2002)
• [10] gives the khanhoo the chung fa play was 'analogous' to: four copies of each card, 15 cards to the dealer and 14 to the rest, draw and discard, and a winning hand of 'eyes' plus sequences or three of the same rank. Its three-of-a-rank meld is the card-game ancestor of Wilkinson's 'any 3 aces, or any 3 nines (not all of the same suit)'
• [11] Culin in 1924: 'The game which then (1891) was like the present ma-jong is from Ningpo and called chung fat, "hit and go"', with 'eight blanks', confined to Zhejiang and Jiangsu, played in a way 'analogous to khanhoo'; while at that time 'the name ma tseuk (ma tsioh), "sparrows," was applied in Central China to the paper cards with three money suits'
• [12] Foster in 1924 names Wilkinson's 1893 Columbian Exposition sets as 'The earliest known sets of which I can find any record', says the tiles 'if not the game played with them, were called Chung Fa', and notes 'There are no Seasons in the set sent to the Columbia Exposition in 1893 by W. H. Wilkinson'
• [13] page 5, on the Wilkinson sets: Wilkinson named them 中發 and glossed it 'hit and go'. He obtained one set each in Ningbo and Shanghai in 1889, and a third in Ningbo in 1892 for Chicago. The British Museum's box is stamped 橫相, 中發 and 烏木. Ebashi calls it the 清麻雀 'plain sparrow' set said to originate in Ningbo, and 'the direct ancestral form of today's mahjong tiles', although its one, three and eight of strings still carry the older designs
• [13] CONFLICT ON THE COUNT: Ebashi gives the Wilkinson set as 144 pieces in all, with no flowers. Stanwick counts the British Museum set at 140, and Wilkinson's own 1893 catalogue lists 108 suit tiles, 16 winds, 4 中, 4 發 and 8 blanks, which also makes 140. Ebashi gives no breakdown for his figure
• [13] page 5 also asks why Wilkinson wrote just 中發 rather than '中發麻雀', and suggests either a Shanghai short form or Wilkinson's own reading. Ebashi concludes the name in use was 中發 or 中發骨牌, not 中發麻雀

Reading it

The date is well supported, and there is more of a ruleset behind it than this entry used to say. An earlier pass here said no written 1890 ruleset lies behind the node. That was wrong. Wilkinson's 1890 manuscript describes the play of chungfa, and his 1925 memorandum quotes it directly: four players named for the compass points, 15 cards each 'as in Khanhoo', scoring 'tricks' by a tariff agreed before play, and sequences that fill a hand but 'score nothing'. Stanwick quotes the passage, Sloper's catalogue summarises it, and the Depaulis-Tsui chart scores it. They agree, but they are not independent: all three rest on the one copy Depaulis found.

The objects agree with the text. Wilkinson's own 1893 catalogue, read here in Culin's reprint, describes set No. 43 from Ningbo: 108 suit tiles, four each of the winds, 中 and 發, and eight blanks, 140 tablets in all. His 1889 Ningbo set in the British Museum has the same count and a box stamped 中發. Set beside its parent, the 1870s sets, the change is clean. The kings, the rulers and the seasons are gone, and 發 has arrived, so the 136-tile core of the later game exists by 1889.

This is not yet the classical game. The hand is 15 tiles, not 14. There is a mixed-suit triplet of aces or nines, which mahjong does not have. Sequences score nothing, and the chart finds concealed sets not rewarded more highly, the opposite of the Late Qing novels. Four other points of the Late Qing game are unknown for 1890. The 'sparrow' name also belonged elsewhere: in 1890 ma que was the name of the paper money deck around Hankou, and the tiles were chung fa.

One gap remains. Nobody here has read the 1925 memorandum itself. Wilkinson marked it 'Not for Publication', and Depaulis's 2002 newsgroup thread that transcribes it could not be reached: Google Groups refuses automated requests and the Wayback Machine has no capture. Every rule above is therefore second-hand, and comes through one discoverer. The objects, and Wilkinson's 1893 catalogue, are what corroborate it independently.