![]() ![]() ( Rachel Koon)Īlmost all the people that helped form the National Mah Jongg League were Jewish American women. The Chinese character on this tile means “East,” representing the East wind. While the Mahjong craze started dying out for many Americans after the 1920s, in 1937, the National Mah Jongg League was formed in an attempt to standardize the rules of the game and help revitalize the game. In the 1920s and 1930s, Chinese Americans who were labeled as perpetual foreigners by other Americans found the sense of community they were searching for in Mahjong. The game became crucial to facilitating a sense of community in groups such as Chinese American immigrants and Jewish American women. Entrepreneurs and tourists visiting China brought the game over to the United States, where it became a fad during the 1920s. While the game was a hit in China, it also became relatively popular internationally in countries like America and Japan. It was not until 1985 that the game was brought back and began to prosper again. Shuffling hard tiles creates loud rumbling and clacking noises, perfect for covering up conversations. This worked well as Mahjong is a noisy game. It was during this era that the leftist intellectual Wu Han would host discussions regarding politics and current events under the guise of playing Mahjong while he was under surveillance by China’s nationalist security forces. During the 1940s, many women would escape from the harsh realities of their daily lives by gathering with their Mahjong friends. Over time, mahjong grew to be associated with the more corrupt parts of society and was even banned in 1949 by the People’s Republic of China.īut even amid the negative connotation that the game held, Mahjong still had a firm hold on the hearts of the people. Many speculate that the images adorned by mahjong tiles took inspiration from Madiao. Madiao was likely modified and combined with other types of games to create the Mahjong people play today. As a result of this popularity, the game came to be associated with the fall of the dynasty. Madiao was an extremely popular tile game towards the end of the Ming Dynasty. But like its predecessor Madiao, the game received heavy criticism from scholar-officials as signs of moral decay, corrupt officials, and wasting time. People from all over China traveling through the ports would bring the game back to their respective provinces, and before long, the game was being played by wealthy, poor, men, and women alike, all over the country. Through China’s defeat in the first opium war - the Taiping Rebellion - and the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Mahjong spread like wildfire through the treaty ports that were opened due to the unfair Treaty of Nanking. The game rose to popularity during a time of adversity in China when tragedies were striking left and right. But the game is actually much younger than most people would think.Īs we know it today, the history of mahjong dates back to the mid-1800s in Southern China towards the end of the last imperial dynasty, the Qing Dynasty. The rules always seem so complicated, as I built towers while they played,” said Justine Chen ’21. “The symbols on Mahjong pieces always fascinated me whenever I saw my grandparents playing. I always assumed that mahjong was an ancient game that emperors of the Tang and Song dynasties once played. To an 8-year-old, these mahjong tiles looked like nothing more than glorified building blocks that my brother and I would use to build towers when the adults stepped away from the table to eat. I would peek over the shoulders of my dad, perplexed at how this complex game worked. ![]() As a child, I remember the adults sitting around the square mahjong tables for hours. Growing up in a Chinese American household, this was a common sight to behold at family gatherings, parties, and celebrations. And in an instant, one of the players grabs a tile, peers at it, and yells out “食糊” ( Sik Wu ) in Cantonese, flipping over their row of tiles in one swift motion as their opponents groan in defeat. Onlookers stand and peer over the shoulders of the competitors. Each takes turns grabbing and discarding tiles from the diamond-shaped Mahjong tile stack. Here is an up close image of Mahjong tiles.įour players huddle around the square wooden table. ![]()
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