Shengguan Tu

Shengguan Tu (simplified Chinese: 升官图; traditional Chinese: 陞官圖; pinyin: shēngguān tú), translated variously as Promoting Officials and Table of Bureaucratic Promotion, is an ancient Chinese board game that originated in the Tang dynasty, with the earliest historical record of a variant of it dating back to 836. The game has players take on the roles of mandarins; the objective of the game is to attain the highest possible bureaucratic position, whilst accumulating more prestige and monetary funds than other players. Contemporary commentators have compared it to snakes and ladders for its mechanics and Monopoly for its reflection of the values of the inventors' society. Historically a gambling game doubling as an educational tool for acquainting Chinese males with the bureaucratic hierarchy, it still enjoys relative popularity nowadays.