Each painted leaf is a playing card used for a drinking and gambling game and indicates the amount of money involved and sets the conditions under which the player must drink a cup of wine. The Water Margin Classic is one of the four best known novels of the Ming dynasty. Based on a Yuan play and set in the last years of the Northern Song dynasty, it relates the adventures of 108 bandits, who are forced to illegally avenge the misdeeds of corrupt officials.

A set of woodblock print cards that also depict figures from the Shui Hu Chuan were made from paintings by Chen Hongshou that were then carved by Huang Zili (Zhongguo Meishu Quanji, Beijing, 1988, vol. 20, no. 66). The forty leaves of the carved Shuihu Yezi are slightly larger than the painted ones offered here but are inscribed with similar information and the figures are depicted with the same detailed outline technique.