※The following is for reference only:
On the origin of playing cards
Legend has it that as early as the end of the Qin Dynasty, during the time of the Chu and Han Dynasties, the great general Han Xin invented a card game in order to alleviate his soldiers' homesickness, and because the cards are only the size of a leaf, they are called "Leaf Play". (The "leaf card" is the size of two fingers. (The "leaf card", the size of two fingers. 8 centimeters long, 2.5 centimeters wide "leaf card", framed with silk and paper, the pattern is printed with woodcut). This is said to be the prototype of playing cards.
The twelfth century, Marco Polo brought this card game to Europe, immediately aroused great interest in the West. At first, it was only a luxury for the aristocrats, but because it was inexpensive, played in a variety of ways, and was easy to learn, it soon became popular among the people.
The French interpreted the four colors as spears, squares, lilac leaves and hearts;
The Germans interpreted the four colors as leaves, bells, acorns and hearts;
The Italians interpreted the four colors as swords, coins, crutches, and wine glasses;
The Swiss interpreted the four colors as acorns, bells, flowers, and shields;
The English, on the other hand, interpreted the four colors as swords, coins, crutches, and wine glasses. The English, on the other hand, understand the four flower colors as the spade, the diamond, the clover and the red heart.
There are many historical accounts of why these four patterns were used as the playing card suits. The more concentrated ones are as follows:
One is that these four suits represent the four main trades of the society at that time, with spades representing spears, symbolizing soldiers; clubs representing trefoils, symbolizing agriculture; diamonds representing bricks and mortar used by craftsmen; and hearts representing red hearts, symbolizing priests.
Another theory is that the four colors come from the drawings of ancient European artifacts used in divination, with the spade representing the olive leaf, symbolizing peace; the plum blossom being the clover, meaning luck; the square being in the shape of a diamond, symbolizing wealth; and the cardinal being the shape of a red heart, symbolizing wisdom and love.
The 54-card pattern of playing cards is also very wonderful to explain:
The king represents the sun, the king represents the moon, and the rest of the 52 cards represent the 52 weeks of the year;
The four suits, hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades symbolize the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter;
The fact that there are 13 cards in each suit means that each season has 13 weeks in each season.
If you take the J, Q, and K as 11, 12, and 13 points, and the king and queen as half-points, the total number of points in a deck of playing cards is exactly 365. And a leap year counts the major and minor kings as 1 point each, ***366 points.
Experts generally agree that the above explanation is not a coincidence, because the design and invention of playing cards are inextricably linked to astrology, divination, and astronomy and calendars.
There was a legend that Henry VIII was the model for the four K's; the four K's on the oldest surviving British playing cards have the same curly mustache and beard as Henry VIII. It is also said that the model for the portrait motif on the four Queens was probably Queen Elizabeth of York, the queen of Henry VII. The manufacture of playing cards in France has always evolved along the lines of each manufacturer's own, and by 1813 the government issued an officially approved design, giving a name to each head card, which is still used in many playing cards to this day:
Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs
K, David, Charles, Caesar, Alexander
Q, Paras, Judith, Rachel. Akinyi
J Hodgil Rahael Hector Lancelot to be
K of Spades
David was the 10th-century B.C. king of Israel, King Solomon's father David, who was a good harpist and wrote many hymns in the Bible, so the K of Spades picture often has a harp icon on it.
Q of Spades
Pallas is the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, Pallas? Asina, the only one of the four Queens cards to hold a weapon.
Jack of Spades
Hodgil was the squire of Charles I (the King of Hearts).
K of Hearts
Charles I was the only king of the four Kings who did not wear a beard.
Q of Hearts
It was Queen Judith.
Jack of Hearts
Rahel was Charles VII's squire.
King of Diamonds
Caesar the Great was the king of the Roman Empire and is the only side portrait in the four king cards.
Q of Diamonds
Queen Lycell.
J of Diamonds
Hector was Charles I's valet.
Plum K
It was Alexander, King of the Macedonian Empire, who first conquered the world, and always wore jewelry complete with crosses on his clothes.
Plum Q
The word Argine is derived from the word Regina, the Queen, who held a rosebud, signifying that the Lancaster royal family, symbolized by the red rosebud, and the York royal family, symbolized by the white rosebud, were finally reconciled after the Rosy War in England, tying their rosebuds together.
Plum J
Lancelot stayed a knight in the King Arthur stories.
The J (JACK) in poker was originally used in the word KNAVE (villain), which was quite popular in Britain and continental Europe until the 1940s, and is now largely obsolete, but is still in use in some countries in Europe, such as Sweden. One of the reasons why the replacement of the word KNAVE by JACK gained public acceptance so quickly was the convenience of using the first letter J of the word JACK when recording or reporting card cases, or when using abbreviations, or when recounting the process of playing a card, whereas in the past, when using the word KNAVE, one would have had to use Kn, and it would have been confusing to use K only.
In 1840, after the Opium War foreign poker also entered China with the foreigners. At that time, imported poker mainly from the United States and Japan, Japanese poker because of the cheap price and best-selling. 1931, the country set off a boycott of Japanese goods movement, advocating national goods, the development of industry, Shanghai people gold Sheng founded the Cuihua card factory, test production of China's first batch of poker, the red lion brand poker.