A Lucky Hand
The favorite Manchurian card game is played with a deck of five cards. The card denoting Death bears the image of an owl, its eyes closed, sitting on a branch. Another, called Love, shows a pear tree. Then there is Rage, depicted by a lightning bolt. It is traditional to illustrate the card named Tranquility with a panorama of the Liao-tung Plain under moonlight, but some modern purveyors, finding this too similar in visual tone to Death and Rage, resort to the image of a lily pad, which, in the more whimsical editions, supports a fat frog. Likewise, the Majesty card is traditionally adorned with a moonlit view of the westernmost peak of Ch’ang-peshan, though nowadays it often bears the more vivid decoration of a scarlet dragon resting on a cloud.
These figures of Death, Love, Rage, Tranquility, and Majesty are printed on pasteboard rectangles that, when properly oriented, are greater in width than in height. They are unwieldy in both dimensions. Even a common deck that might be seen in a laborers’ inn is a foot wide and eight inches tall. The Ts’ing imperial household used a deck sixty feet in width, forty feet in height, that was manipulated by a dozen acolytes through a system of levers and pulleys.
Wherever the game is played, from the highest court to the lowest tavern, the rules are the same. Only two at a time may play. The cards are shuffled, then fanned between the blindfolded opponents. Both reach out and lay a finger on a card. If both have chosen the same card, they must throw cherry stones at each other’s legs, and whichever is first to strike the other three times below the knee has won. Otherwise, the cards are drawn, and each player privately examines his own. Each may now elect, independently of the other, to discard this first choice of card and draw instead the card lying farthest toward his left.
At last, each player reveals his card, and the outcome is decided. Rage defeats Love and Majesty, but loses to Tranquility and Death. Death prevails over Tranquility and Majesty, but is overcome by Love. Tranquility conquers Love and falls to Majesty. No other combinations are possible.
Although a player’s actions during the game are understood to have no relation to his personality or moral standing, the outcome itself is deeply significant. By law, no man must play another more than once in his lifetime, and although the loser suffers no disadvantage in society or business, he must yield to the winner certain privileges. For example, if the two should ever pass in the street, the loser must cede the sidewalk to the winner. Other forfeits vary by locality. In some prefectures of Feng-tien province, the winner is entitled in perpetuity to twenty grains from every pot of rice prepared in the loser’s kitchen, with the annual total rendered on New Year’s Eve.
It is forbidden for the principals to gamble on their own game, but onlookers have famously bet on heavy stakes. A provincial governor once tendered his youngest and most beautiful daughter in marriage to his bitter rival, against five thousand acres of woodland. The annals record that the game ended in Death and Majesty at the expense of the governor, but the marriage turned out to be a long and fruitful one, while the woods that he would have cut down and sold are today a preserve for songbirds.
