Shengguan Tu, which means Promoting Officials or Table of Bureaucratic Promotion, is an ancient Chinese board game that originated in the Tang dynasty. The earliest historical record of a variant dates to 836. Players take the roles of mandarins and aim to reach the highest bureaucratic position while gathering more prestige and money than their rivals. Commentators have compared its mechanics to snakes and ladders and its reflection of the values of its inventors' society to Monopoly. Historically it was a gambling game that doubled as a tool for teaching Chinese males the bureaucratic hierarchy, and it remains relatively popular today.
Facts
Classification
Player Count Player CountLarge Group or Variable 1 Skill or Luck Sport
Game Type (category) In the Other Atlases
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Source Shengguan Tu (Wikipedia)Lead sentence [origin-region]Quote, Lead sentence [origin-region]
ancient Chinese board game that originated in the Tang dynasty
Sources
1. Shengguan Tu (Wikipedia)
Infobox: players
2 onwards
Infobox: random_chance
High (dice rolling)
Infobox: date
836
Lead sentence
is an ancient Chinese board game
Lead sentence [origin-region]
ancient Chinese board game that originated in the Tang dynasty
Lead paragraph
is an ancient Chinese board game that originated in the Tang dynasty
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