Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Mind

In only a dozen years, Chinese-born collector Wei Zhang and her husband
Peter Rasmussen have acquired a diverse and well-documented collection
of 1200 antique Chinese puzzles, only a few of which are familiar to
western collectors. The puzzles include tangram sets, wire puzzles,
puzzle locks, puzzle rings and bracelets, sliding block puzzles,
puzzling images of the four happiness boys, puzzle vessels, and more.

Now a broad selection of these puzzles is presented in this beautifully
illustrated 80-page book. The book is divided into ten sections, each
focusing on a particular type of puzzle. Each section contains a short
history of the puzzle (in English and Chinese), photographs of
representative puzzles, and additional images of them in old Chinese
prints, books and photographs. The oldest item included is from the
Ming dynasty a brass paperweight made in the form of four boys sharing
two heads. The chapters on puzzle locks and puzzle vessels demonstrate
how these ingenious creations work.