Month: March 2024

Historical artifact: 汉字组字扑克 (Chinese character combination poker)

Posted on by Jason Li

A view of the box package for 汉字组字扑克 (Chinese character combination poker) from the top. The box is green and has various designs combining typography and illustrated playing cards.

Some photos of cards, showing how they might be combined by placing the cards next to or on top of one another.

I purchased this children’s educational card game in Penang, Malaysia in 2023. Its name is 汉字组字扑克, which roughly translates to “Chinese character combination poker.” This box set did not come with any instructions, but its name and design suggests it’s a kind of “扑克…

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Typography Design

Digitally Typesetting Rare, Ancient and Esoteric Chinese Characters

Posted on by Jason Li

The short answer

Install the BabelStone Han font, which supports “57,000 Han characters… [and] includes many rare or archaic characters that are not found in most CJK fonts” on your computer. Then look up the character on Unicode’s Unihan Database Lookup website (using the Stroke-Radical Index) and copy-and-paste it from…

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