With the rise of internet gaming, gaming consoles, and PC gaming, traditional tabletop games such as card-games, chess, checkers, carom, etc, are starting to lose out in the face of stiff competition from their more hip, on-screen counterparts. However, one game which has never seemed to die out, even in the digital age, is the age-old Chinese favourite called…Mahjong!

The most famous of all Chinese traditional games, in this blog-posting, we’ll be looking at the history of mahjong, how it’s played, where it came from, where it went, and what happened to it along the way.

So, shuffle your tiles, build your walls, form your melds, and place your bets!

It’s time to go mahjonging…

Mahjong – What’s in a Name?

‘Mahjong’ is the accepted modern spelling of the traditional Chinese game known as “Mah Jiang”. The most literal translation of the word ‘mahjong’ is ‘sparrows’ (‘Mah’ in Chinese), or ‘chattering sparrows’. This is believed to have been derived from the clattering, chattering, clacking noise produced by traditional mahjong tiles, which sound like chittering, fluttering birds.

An alternative spelling of the game – chiefly used in the United States – is “Mah Jongg” – for some reason, with two ‘g’s on the end. This is actually a trademarked name, and is not in any way related to the traditional Chinese pronunciation, Wade-Giles Romanisation, or pinyin spelling. I’ll explain how it got its “two-g’s” spelling, further on down in the article.

The History of Mahjong

The exact origins of mahjong are unknown. Where, when and by whom the game was invented have been lost to history. Creative marketing, myths, and legend, will tell you that mahjong is an ancient game, invented thousands of years ago, by the great Chinese philosopher, Confucius, as a way to train the mind, that it was played by the concubines and empresses in the Forbidden City in Peking, and that from these lofty beginnings, the game was gradually democratised over the passing centuries to the Chinese peasantry, to become the national game of China!

…Right?

I’m very sorry to disappoint you, but…none of that is even slightly true! Not one bit of it.

Detective-work and educated guesses by Chinese historians seem to have traced the game’s roots to Chinese card-games played in the 17th and 18th centuries. Such games were similar to modern Poker, or Gin-Rummy, which are the closest European equivalents to modern mahjong, in terms of gameplay.

The problem was, of course, that paperboard playing-cards did not last very long. They were easily prone to damage, warping, tearing, and splitting. These thin, paper cards were difficult to hold, fiddly to handle, and lightweight, which means they can blow away in the wind…hardly ideal when you’re in the middle of a game.

The game that’s most similar to mahjong, before mahjong itself was invented, is known as Yezipai, or simply “Yezi”. It was played using small slivers or slices of ivory, bone, or wood, an improvement on paper cards, but still not as hard-wearing as modern mahjong tiles. The thin sheets of ivory and bone were easily broken and could be snapped in half, ruining an entire deck due to one person’s clumsiness!

It’s for this reason that someone – nobody knows who – decided to transfer the designs on the cards onto durable, heavyweight bone and ivory tiles – solid blocks which could be stacked, stood up, laid down, packed and unpacked easily, and which could withstand years of heavy-handed playing.

When this transition took place, nobody seems to know, but it appears to have happened by the early 1800s. As for where the game was invented, that’s a bit more straightforward: In the first half of the 19th century, when mahjong was likely in its infancy, the game was only really being played in one location in China: Ningpo.

A port city in Zhejiang Province, Ningpo was one of several “treaty ports” opened by the British as a result of the unequal Treaty of Nanking, which ended the 1839-1842 First Opium War.

The chief British diplomat stationed in Ningpo in the mid-1800s was a man named Frederick E.B. Harvey. Harvey’s official title was British Consul to Ningpo, and he was in charge of the British Consulate within the city.

Harvey’s diplomatic career in China started in Hong Kong. Thereafter he was transferred to the International Settlement of Shanghai, and finally, to Ningpo, in 1859.

It was while living in Ningpo that Harvey met a man named Chen Yumen – the person who would introduce him to the relatively new game called ‘Mahjong’.

Harvey’s letters home to England, and diary-entries while living in Ningpo, are the first written English records detailing the gameplay, rules, and culture surrounding mahjong. His writings are also among the first references, in any language – to the existence of mahjong in any capacity, giving us a fairly accurate starting date for mahjong in the early 1800s.

From its creation in Ningpo, mahjong spread to Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin, and eventually, to all of China.

Mahjong in the 20th Century

For most of the 1800s, mahjong remained a largely Chinese game, played wherever four Chinese people could be found to fill a mahjong table, but this started to change at the end of the 19th century.

Chinese migration in the second half of the 1800s, and the turn of the 1900s saw the game being exported to ethnic Chinese communities overseas, such as those in San Francisco and New York in the United States, to the British Asian colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore, and to other cities with large Chinese populations such as London in England, or Toronto, in Canada. Western exposure to mahjong started largely in the early 1900s – and a lot of it had to do with one city:

Shanghai.

As mentioned previously, mahjong is believed to have been invented in, or near, the city of Ningpo, on the southern shores of Hangzhou Bay in Zhejiang Province.

Well, if you study a map of China, you’ll find out that the nearest major city to Ningpo is just across the bay, and a few miles north – the city of Shanghai – built around the Huangpu River, which leads to the Yangtze nearby.

By the late 1800s, knowledge of mahjong had spread to Shanghai. This larger, more cosmopolitan city adopted the game, and made it their own. Mahjong was played everywhere in Shanghai, from inside peoples’ homes, to public parks, teahouses, private clubs, and even in dedicated mahjong houses. Mahjong manufacturing was also centered around Shanghai. The large, urban population meant that there were loads of off-cuts of the materials used to make mahjong sets: Wood, bone, ivory, and bamboo, so the city was the natural location where mahjong sets would be produced.

It was from Shanghai that mahjong was exported, either physically, or by word-of-mouth, around the world. It was in Shanghai, or more specifically, within the confines of the International Settlement, that mahjong was first exposed in a big way to Western audiences. British, American, French, Russian, and Jewish expats living in Shanghai (known as “Shanghailanders”) became fascinated with the game, and started playing it with their Chinese friends.

At the same time, Western tourists visiting Shanghai were purchasing sets of mahjong, and taking them home as souvenirs, or writing about them in letters and postcards, and posting these back to loved ones and friends in Europe and North America. Expats who had lived in Shanghai for some number of years, and who had come to love the game, purchased mahjong sets as mementos of their Chinese adventures, and likely played mahjong during the long steamer-journeys home to the USA, Canada, or Europe, exposing the game to even more foreigners.

Mahjong in the West

It was in this way that mahjong started catching on in Western countries – particularly Britain, Canada, the United States, and countries in Western Europe which had extensive contact with China. Mahjong started being imported to the USA in the early 1920s by Standard Oil Company executive Joseph Park Babcock. Babcock had headed up the Standard Oil office in Shanghai, operating out of the International Settlement. While living in China, Babcock and his wife had developed a taste for mahjong, and he got the notion into his head that if he marketed it correctly – mahjong could become huge in the United States!

To this end, Babcock wrote a simplified rule-book for mahjong, and started marketing it aggressively as “Mah-Jongg” (with two g’s) in the USA.

Mahjong was already starting to gain traction in the U.S., because of, as I mentioned previously – written references to the game in letters and postcards, and because foreign tourists were bringing back mahjong sets from China as souvenirs of their travels. However, it was Joseph P. Babcock’s creative streak that really set the ball rolling when it came to the arrival of mahjong in the United States.

Along with the simplified rules and importing new sets directly from Shanghai, Babcock came up with a whole fanciful “history” for the game. In the early 1900s, all things “Oriental” were highly en-vogue in the Western world. Chinese-style clothing, dresses, furniture, food, Chinese decorative elements and colour-schemes, were all the rage. Look no further than the reconstruction of Chinatown in San Francisco, post-1906, as one example.

It was into this heady mix of fried rice, silk robes, chopsticks, and a blur of red, black, and yellow hues, that the first large-scale Western contact with mahjong had entered. Mahjong was seen as being mysterious, new, exciting, dangerous, hedonistic, and exotic! No game like it had existed in the West before, and Americans bought up mahjong so fast that importers working with manufacturers in Shanghai couldn’t keep up with demand! Luxurious mahjong sets made of beautiful woods, with inlaid cases decorated with polished metalwork, and intricately carved tiles were bought and sold by, and from big-name department stores and gaming-products manufacturers, such as Parker Brothers in the US (more famous these days for selling “CLUE”).

Mahjong became so popular in America that there was even a song written about it! “Ma is Playing Mahjong”, from 1924! The lyrics are, perhaps, not very politically correct, 100 years later, but its existence speaks to the incredible impact that mahjong had on American culture. You can listen to it here…

It was in this way that mahjong became incredibly popular in the United States, starting in the 1910s and 20s, and going right through the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and well into the present-day!

While mahjong thrived in the West, mahjong in China was under attack! During the Cultural Revolution – the ten-year period between 1966-1976, mahjong was banned in China for being a decadent, wasteful extravagance, and an “old idea” that had no place in the “New China”! The ban was lifted upon the end of the Revolution, when Chairman Mao died in 1976.

The Mahjong Set

Obviously, to play mahjong, you need a mahjong set. A traditional mahjong set comes with dice (at least two, and sometimes up to four), a wind-disc or indicator, with wind-directions engraved or printed on it in Chinese characters, tally-sticks (for scoring) or tokens / coins (again, for scoring), and last, but not least – the tiles!

A full mahjong set contains 144 tiles, divided into suits. The suits are:

Circles, Bamboo, Wan (or ‘characters’), Winds, Dragons, Honours, and Bonuses, also called Flowers and Seasons. Unless you’re playing competitive mahjong, the bonuses/flower tiles, can be discarded, as they won’t affect play unless you’re actually scoring the game. Because of this, mahjong sets which are bought just to enjoy the fun of the game, rather than for competition, usually exclude these tiles, for a set of 136 tiles, instead.

Each suit has four sets of tiles with numbers going from 1-9, for circles, bamboo, the wan/characters, and four-each, of the winds, and dragons. By tradition, One of Bamboo is indicated by a bird (usually a peacock, or similar). The “Wan” tiles have numbers in Chinese characters, with another character (the “wan”) underneath. “Wan” is the Chinese word for “10,000”, so for example, a two-wan tile is actually “20,000”. Again, this is used in scoring the game, but when playing for fun, most people ignore this stuff. There are four-each, of the honours and bonus tiles.

To play the game effectively, at the very least, you will require a pair of dice, and a full set of mahjong tiles (which, again, is 144 pieces).

In the 1800s and during the first half of the 20th century, when mahjong was at its height of international popularity, mahjong sets were sold in fantastically elaborate cases. These cases or cabinets had handles, sliding doors, and tile-drawers to hold the tiles and paraphernalia for playing. Today, such cabinets (there’s usually 4-5 drawers – one for each suit, and a fifth drawer for the bits and pieces), in good condition, complete with their sets of playing tiles and accessories, cost hundreds, or even thousands of dollars each.

Modern mahjong sets, usually made of melamine plastic (unless you’re rich enough to afford a handmade set which is produced the old-fashioned way using bone and bamboo!) are sold in simple briefcase-style boxes for ease of storage and transport. Some modern-day manufacturers, looking to recapture the beauty of the antique cases from the 1900s, will produce modern-day sets in vintage-style cases, complete with the handles, sliding doors and pull-out drawers.

How to Play Mahjong!

Now that you have your mahjong set, you need to know how to use it! How do you play with it? How do you win? What’s the POINT OF THE GAME!?

The following instructions are given based on the use of a traditional mahjong set – which has 144 tiles – and gameplay as followed using traditional Chinese/Hong-Kong-style rules.

The aim of a game of mahjong is to build a winning hand of tiles (14 in number) comprised of FOUR MELDS and ONE PAIR.

A “meld” is a grouping of tiles, and a pair is…a…pair! Two matched, identical tiles.

There are three traditional melds:

Pong, Kong, and Chow, also spelled as “Pung”, “Gung”, “Chi”, and various other spellings, depending on Chinese dialects. For the sake of simplicity, I will use “Pong, Kong and Chow”.

A “Pong” is three identical tiles. For example – three white dragons.

A “Kong” is four identical tiles. For example – four West Winds.

A “Chow” is three suited tiles in-sequence. For example – one-two-three of bamboo, circles, or wans, or 2, 3, 4, or 4, 5, 6…you get the idea.

Once you have built four melds (which would usually be 12 tiles), then you have to get your “pair” – two identical tiles. Once you’ve got that, you’ve won the game! Traditionally, the winner will clamp their winning hand together between their fingers, and then slam them down on the table in triumph, to announce their winning hand! (trust me, you should totally do this. It’s a lot of fun!).

And that’s basically it. There are other details, which I’ll go into later on, so keep reading…

Setting up the Game

To play a game of mahjong, you need at least two people (and ideally, four), a square, or circular table, and plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely afternoon of gossip, gameplay, tea-drinking, and shouted profanity, when you find out that someone has beat you at the table!

First, you have to “wash” or shuffle the tiles. Once the tiles are shuffled, you have to build your walls.

There are four walls. If you’re using a traditional 144-tile set, then the walls are 36 tiles each, or two rows of 18 tiles, double-stacked.

The ritual of building the walls is one of the reasons why mahjong was so fascinating to Europeans when they first saw the game. The customs and intricacies of gameplay were unlike anything they had ever seen with cards, or chess, or checkers. It simply had no comparison to anything in the West. In the American version of mahjong (and yes, there is an American version), this stage of the game is known as “Building the Great Wall of China” (because, why not, right?). It’s another element of the game which harks back to the Western exoticism of mahjong in the early-20th-century.

Once the four walls are built, they’re set out in a square. Then you throw the pair of dice into the square, and count around the players going anti-clockwise until you reach the number of the dice. The person you land on is the dealer.

You throw the dice again, and then count along the dealer’s wall. You break the wall at that number, and then each player takes three stacks of four tiles (so, 12) from that break in the wall, again, going anticlockwise around the walls.

The dealer takes an additional stack, giving them 14 tiles. Every other player takes ONE extra tile (so, 13 tiles). The tiles that you’re given (or have taken) form your “hand”. These are the tiles you will concentrate on for the duration of the game. Got all that? Right! The game is now ready to start.

Playing a Game of Mahjong

To begin, if anybody has “bonus” tiles – Seasons, or Flowers – toss them out. You won’t need them in gameplay unless you’re doing a professional game with scoring. Replace those tiles with fresh tiles from the wall. Take a minute to set up your tiles and arrange them in a way that makes sense to you, and see if you have any patterns emerging, or any melds or pairs you can form. When setting up your tiles, they’re stood up on-end, facing you. This conceals your hand from other players, displays your tiles easily for quick manipulation, and allows you to slide, part, or push your tiles together as required, to build melds and pairs.

Got all that? Right! Next step…

Now, the dealer casts out his first tile to kick the game off. By tradition, a game of mahjong moves in an anticlockwise direction around the table.

Each player TAKES one tile, sets it into their hand, and then CASTS OUT one tile that they don’t need. That is considered one turn. Once a player has done that, play moves to the next participant, and so-on, around the table.

As the game progresses, you’ll end up with two “piles” on the table. One is the “draw pile” or the “wall”, and the other pile (in the middle of the table) is the “discard pile”. These are all the tiles that people have chucked out of their hands that they don’t need. As a courtesy to other players, keep the discard pile neat and tidy, as it helps people to know which tile was freshly discarded, and prevents later confusion during gameplay.

You may take a tile from the discard pile to form a meld, or to complete a winning hand and end the game. However, if you do this, then you must “open” the meld to the rest of the table. So, for example, if someone throws out a tile and you find that taking that tile produces a meld for you, you can grab it and shove it into your hand. But then, you have to drop those tiles down onto the table to show the other players the meld that you’ve built from that discard.

You don’t have to do this if you form a meld from a tile taken from the wall-tiles, during your turn.

And so the game continues until a person has a winning hand of FOUR MELDS and ONE PAIR. A winning hand is typically 14 tiles – four groups of three, and one pair, or 18 tiles – four groups of four, and a pair – although this is much harder to attain, so most people will stick to a 14-tile winning hand.

When you have built your winning hand, line up your tiles in a row, grip them together firmly, and then slam them down onto the table, all together, in one, swift, sure, satisfying, and smug move, to show that you’ve won the game!

And that is how mahjong works! It’s really that simple.

Of course, there are complexities – for example – what type of mahjong are you playing? There’s three main styles – Japanese-style mahjong, also known as “Richii Mahjong” (“Richii!” is what you shout when you’re one tile away from winning!), American-style mahjong, which developed in the 1920s and 30s, and finally, the oldest, and most authentic version – Hong-Kong-style mahjong. Most Asians who play mahjong will have grown up learning Hong Kong-style mahjong.

Buying a Mahjong Set

So – you wanna buy a mahjong set, huh?

Sure! I mean they’re not that hard to buy, are they? There’s loads of them on eBay, AliExpress, and other websites. You can probably buy one in any Chinatown in the world, or while visiting countries with large Chinese populations such as Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, etc. Or, you might just find one at your local weekend flea-market.

If you do buy a set, it’s likely to be a modern set, with plastic tiles, counters, tally-sticks, dice, and other accessories, in a briefcase-style box. If you buy a secondhand set, make sure that the case is in good condition, that all the pieces are present and correct, and that you can open and close the case smoothly and securely – the last thing you want is to pick up the case and have everything spill out! Whoops…

But, I hear you say…

“I Want to Buy one of those Fancy Antique Mahong Sets!”

No problem! You can still buy one of those – but there are a lot more things to think about. Antique sets are more likely to have missing pieces, have structural damage, and of course – have higher prices! Depending on age, condition, completeness and rarity, an antique mahjong set can be had for a few hundred dollars, all the way up to a few thousand dollars!

When buying an antique set, make sure that you have all the tiles – a full set is 144 tiles. A set without the “bonus” or “honour” tiles is 136 tiles. Most sets are one, or the other. If it has less than 136 or 144 tiles, then there’s tiles missing!

Check the case for damage. Splitting, cracking, dovetail-joinery coming apart, and so-on. Check any inlays for fit – if they’re getting loose, you’ll have to poke them out, and glue them back in to prevent loss. Check the drawers to make sure they slide in and out smoothly, and that the handles and doors work properly. A lot of these old cases have split wood, cracks, and faulty joinery, so it pays to check literally every square inch of the case, front and back, side to side, top and bottom. Some faults are repairable with glue, clamping, and reinforcement, others are a total loss.

Check the metalwork, as well. Handles, pull-tabs on the drawers, and the corner-tabs on the sides of the case. Usually, these are brass, or nickel-silver. They’re riveted or hammered into place, so check the nails to make sure that nothing’s coming apart. If it is, nail it back in and glue it in place. Traditionally, these cases were meant to be picked up and carried by their handles – you might not want to do that if it’s a rickety case. A case in good condition should be able to be carried without fear of anything coming apart!

Last but not least – check the tiles themselves. Antique mahjong tiles are made in two parts: An upper tile-face, and a lower tile-base. On the majority of antique sets, these were BONE on top and BAMBOO on the base. Other sets used ivory, or special hardwoods, etc. The tiles are spliced together using dovetail joints. High-quality sets will have solid, firm, secure joints, well carved and tight-fitting. Cheap sets have joints which are loose or in danger of falling apart! Traditionally, no glue was used to hold the tiles together. Simple friction was all that kept them as one.

Antique mahjong sets were manufactured by hand. That means that all the woodwork is hand-cut and joined, and the tiles are hand-cut and dovetailed together. Likewise, the tile-faces are carved or engraved by hand. The more intricate the engraving, the higher-quality the set is. Similarly, the more bone-content you have on each tile, the higher quality the set. Sets with hardly any bone on the tiles are cheap and tacky. Sets with loads of bone in each tile are higher quality, as they can withstand higher-quality, more intricate engravings.

My Antique Mahjong Set

In closing this article, I feel it only proper to write one last chapter – with which to introduce to my readers, my own personal mahjong set.

I bought this at auction back in 2018, and paid what some thought, was a rather exorbitant price, at the time. However, recent developments have shown that I basically paid peanuts for something so valuable that it’s basically irreplaceable…certainly for the price I paid!

Comprised of a rosewood case, complete with brass fittings, a sliding door, and four tile-drawers, my mahjong set is one of my absolute pride-and-joys! I would never sell this, and I love being able to use it. The tiles are made in the traditional way – bone and bamboo, dovetailed together, and carved by hand. I don’t know how old it is, but my guess would be early-to-mid 20th century.

The entire case – including the door, and the four, sliding tile-drawers – is made of Chinese rosewood, or what is known as “huanghuali“, in Chinese. The pull-tabs on the lid, and the tile-drawers are little brass butterflies.

Each drawer holds one suit of tiles. Circles, bamboo, wans, and then the dragons, winds and bonuses all live in one drawer by themselves, for a total of 144 tiles. There’s also two tiny bone dice which go with the set.

One thing you may not have noticed about the set is how incredibly SMALL it is! The case measures just 5.5in. x. 5.5in. x 9in! I’ve seen tissue-boxes bigger than that! The tiles are all half-sized, and they’re absolutely adorable! Here are the various suits of tiles…

Overall, the set is in fantastic condition. There’s no damage to speak of, and everything is in perfect, working, usable condition. And I do use it! When my friends and I play mahjong, this is the set we use, and we have a lot of fun with it.

Anyway – this concludes this rather lengthy posting, all about mahjong! Its history, how it’s played, and how to buy and use your very own mahjong set.

Happy playing!

Want to Find out More?

Information for this article was gleamed from the website of mahjong historian Gregg Swain, which may be found at Mahjong Treasures.

Additional information was gleamed from the CCTV documentary about the history of mahjong, which may be found on YouTube (or at least, it could be, at the time of writing this posting).