A few months ago, the author of a site called Ways to Play got in touch with me via my Learn Teochew website to ask about figuring out the original Teochew for a phrase that was quoted in translation, relating to a game known under various names, in English as Nine Man’s Morris, in Teochew 直直 (dig8 dig8).

Ways to Play is a fascinating overview of traditional games played around the world, mostly but not limited to card games and board games. It’s clearly a labor of love by the author George Pollard. It’s great to see his dedication to detail; venturing down deep Internet alleyways to hunt down scraps of information, where a less fastidious compiler would probably have thought a translation is good enough, no need for the original.

This links nicely to a similar website I came across recently, dedicated to the Chinese gambling game of Hua Hui, also spelled Wha-Whey, Hua-Hoey, etc. I first found this while tidying up a Wikisource transcription of an 1885 article on Hua Hoey gambling, which caught my attention because I had actually heard of Hua Hoey before, while researching the biography of my ancestor Seah Eu Chin.

Seah Eu Chin was among a group of 19th century Chinese merchants in Singapore who petitioned the Governor to ban Hua-Hoey gambling in 1870. Their wish was granted in the Gaming Houses Ordinance passed by the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements. A few years later, however, they again petitioned the Governor for an amendment to the ordinance, which presumed that any house with suspicious bars or fittings could be presumed to be a gambling house and be raided by the authorities - as landlords they were afraid that they could be prosecuted because of what their tenants were doing without their knowledge…

At the time I did not probe further into the details of Hua-Hoey gambling, so it is now gratifying to now have learned more about it.