Shengguan Tu

The keju imperial examination system, which Shengguan Tu is based on, was first explicitly mandated upon Chinese students during the Sui dynasty. According to the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China (Taiwan), Shengguan Tu was first introduced during the Tang dynasty which immediately succeeded the Sui dynasty.[3] In his Preface to Selecting a Bureau by Throwing Dice (838), Tang scholar Fang Qianli writes of his playing Caixuan Ge (Selecting a Bureau), "an ancestor to Shengguan Tu",[4] while stranded on a boat with a few friends in 836.[4] Beyond that, however, the "few" historical sources "dealing with (the game) are confused and tend to feed off each other".[1] Twelfth-century writer Xu Du references the game in a short passage in Quesao Bian;[1] subsequent historical sources, including the eighteenth-century Gaiyu Congkao by Zhao Yi, rely heavily on the information provided by Xu.[1] However, Xu's account was based on others' verbal accounts, and the quotations of his passage are believed to have been corrupted, according to Carole Morgan in the Journal of the American Oriental Society.[1] A more recent attempt by Cai Ce in 1968[1] to retrace the early history of Shengguan Tu is similarly "so flawed as to be practically useless".[4]

Tang government official Li He was the undisputed inventor of Caixuan Ge,[5] the early incarnation of Shengguan Tu that Fang Qianli played; Li's game was improved upon and modified by subsequent officials, including Liu Gongfu,[5] who is credited with creating the "version that has been transmitted to the world".[6]

The Western world became aware of Shengguan Tu in as early as the seventeenth century, when Robert Hyde published the Latin book on "oriental games" titled De Ludis Orientalibilis, a portion of which is dedicated to describing the game.[4] In the nineteenth century, Chinese emigrants to the United States, particularly California and New York,[7] who worked as clerks and "barely literate" blue-collar workers enjoyed playing Shengguan Tu as a pastime.[7] The game boards they would use were typically printed in Guangzhou.[1]

Shengguan Tu inspired the creation of similar games.[6] The Song dynasty poet Wang Gui wrote a poem on a gambling game called Xuanxian Tu,[6] or Selecting an Immortal, whose gameplay is identical to that of Shengguan Tu save players are either immortals or commoners, instead of mandarins.[8] In Baiguan Duo (Instructions for all Officials), invented during the Ming dynasty, dice are substituted with "bright stones".[8] Zhonning Shengguan Tu (Promoting Loyal and [Not] Sycophantic Officials)[8] focused on a bureaucrat's "personal character and competence", and access to which was limited to the social circles of two Ming officials.[8] An apocryphal anecdote by Zhao Yi has it that the ailing Emperor Xingzong of Liao began promoting or demoting officials by the roll of a die instead of using his own judgement.[8]

Nowadays the game is still frequently played in parts of mainland China, as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan.[9] Likewise, Shengguan Tu game boards are still in production.[1] As of 2006, some Shengguan Tu boards can cost as much as CN¥10,000.[10] In December 2008, as part of its winter festivities, the North District Tourist Service Centre (北區遊客服務中心) in Changhua, Taiwan installed a lifesize Shengguan Tu board.[11] In January 2016, as part of its first anniversary celebrations, the Taiwanese Fongyi Academy in Fengshan District, Kaohsiung rolled out some hundred modernised copies of Shengguan Tu for public use.[3]