Article

A description of the Chinese lottery known as Hua-Hoey

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

A description of the Chinese lottery known as Hua-Hoey

C.W.S. Kynnersley, a colonial administrator in the Straits Settlements, published this detailed ethnographic description of the Hua-Hoey (Thirty-Six Animals) lottery in 1885, drawing on a Chinese dream-interpretation manual and direct observation of the game’s operation in Penang and Singapore. The article serves as both a technical manual for understanding the lottery’s mechanics and an implicit plea for legislative intervention against what Kynnersley and the Chinese community regarded as a pervasive social evil.

Summary

Kynnersley’s article is structured around a Chinese source text, “On the Interpretation of Dreams with Illustrations of Hua Hoey,” which he uses to reconstruct the mythological backstories of all thirty-six animal characters. Each entry provides the character’s former animal form, their human incarnation, their relationships to other characters, and—crucially—a list of dream symbols that should prompt a staker to wager on that particular animal. This dream-interpretation system is the cultural engine of the game: players do not stake randomly but consult their dreams against a fixed key, making the lottery as much a divination practice as a gambling one. Kynnersley also reproduces a specimen of the staking paper (hong), showing the thirty-six columns with conventional marks and Chinese numerals indicating the amount wagered on each animal.

The second half of the article shifts to the operational and legal realities of Hua-Hoey in the Straits Settlements. Kynnersley describes how a manager issues a notice under a chop, authorises agents to collect stakes (typically capped at $2 per agent), and declares the winning animal twice daily. He is frank about the systemic fraud: the animal least favoured by the public is frequently declared the winner, and managers have been known to stake by deputy on the animal they intend to declare, thereby defrauding genuine winners. The police face significant evidentiary difficulties—the winning character may be written on a piece of yam and swallowed, or inscribed on sand and rubbed out—and a judge had already ruled that mere possession of staking tickets was not an offence. The article closes with a full reproduction of a memorial dated 30 September 1885, addressed to the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements by Chinese residents of Penang, which documents specific cases of embezzlement by clerks seduced into gambling, the pawned jewellery of women, and the keeper’s practice of capping his liability at $1,000 while collecting far more in stakes.

Key Findings

  • The lottery is drawn twice daily (noon and 6 p.m.), with a payout of thirty times the stake, less a small agent’s commission (p. 245).
  • Agents are authorised to collect stakes up to a fixed limit (e.g., $2) on the manager’s account, though they may take larger stakes on their own account (p. 244).
  • A memorial from Penang Chinese residents (30 September 1885) records that a previous suppression campaign approximately twenty years earlier imposed fines of up to $3,000 and rigorous imprisonment, which temporarily halted the game until it re-opened “with re-doubled vigour” within the last year (p. 250).
  • A judge in the Straits held that possession of Hua-Hoey staking tickets was not an offence; in Burma, a high judicial functionary ruled the game did not constitute gambling within the meaning of the applicable Act (p. 246).
  • The memorial specifies that a keeper guarantees liability for only $1,000 per session, yet may collect $2,000 or more in stakes from two thousand or more players, pocketing the entire sum if all lose (p. 249).
  • The thirty-six characters are classified into occupational groups: Four of the Highest Degree, Seven Traders, Four Priests, Five Generals, Four Ladies, Four Happy-lot, One Nun, Two Friars, and Five Beggars (pp. 238–243).

Conclusion

Kynnersley’s definitive takeaway is that Hua-Hoey is not merely a gambling game but a structurally fraudulent enterprise that corrupts every social stratum in the Straits Settlements—from coolies staking ten cents to wealthy Babas pawning diamonds—and that existing legal frameworks are wholly inadequate to suppress it. The appended memorial reinforces this by arguing that the game is “a game of fraud and imposition” in which the keeper controls both the outcome and the payout, and it calls for a specific Ordinance to ban it outright, noting that neighbouring jurisdictions (Perak, Selangor, the Dutch and French colonies) already prohibit it even within licensed gambling farms.

Context

  • Kynnersley was a colonial administrator in the Straits Settlements; the article reflects the contemporary British administrative concern with “native” gambling as a source of social disorder and fiscal loss, and the piece was likely motivated by the need to build a legislative case for suppression.
  • The primary source is a Chinese dream-interpretation manual (title given as “On the Interpretation of Dreams with Illustrations of Hua Hoey”), which Kynnersley translates and annotates; the article’s historiographical value lies in being one of the earliest systematic English-language descriptions of the game’s mechanics and its social penetration in the Straits Settlements.

References