Mahjong

This Friday, I decided to join the  Asian Pacific American Student Association  (APASA) on The University of Arizona campus for their weekly event of Mahjong. Although I am not part of the association, they were very welcoming in having me be a part of their event for one day. 

4 player wall constructed at the start of the game of all 144 tiles

I decided to go with my Asian American friend Rachel, who has played Mahjong before. Being a newcomer to this game I didn't know what to expect but I was excited to learn about a new game of a different culture. Since I didn't know how to play the game they had advised me to start by watching the game to see if I can get the hand of any patterns I see while they were playing. As a visual learner, I was able to identify certain rules of the game. 

Mahjong is a chinese tile game developed during the Qing dynasty and consists of 144 tiles. Consists of different chinese characters and symbols including dots, bamboo, characters, dragons, winds, flowers and seasons. The tiles are split into three catgeories, simple, bonus anad honor. The simple categories of dots, bamboo and charcaters have a numerical value to them (1-9) and allows for a player to gain a set of 4 completeing one set of the game. The prevailing winds and dragons are considered the honor tiles. In Mahjong, the east wind is the starter and not the typical north wind

 I organized my tiles from bamboo to dots, characters then the lucky dragon.

The bonus tiles are the seasons and flowers. These tiles don't aid in the player's set or hand but aid in acquiring more points to win the game itself. So generally they are lucky tiles that are set aside, and you should keep them!

This is considered the "flower" tile

I learned that in order to win the game you must have a winning hand consisting of the four melds. Those melds include 

1. pong : a set of  3 identical tiles of the same number and character but they cant include flowers and seasons

2. kong : a set of 4 identical tiles, for example, 4 characters or 4 bamboo tiles. 

3. chow : a set of 3 tiles of a numerical sequence of the same suit. For example 3 bamboo characters.

4. eyes : a pair of 2 identical tiles 

After understanding the rules of the game, I was finally able to play and win a hand. It was a lot of fun learning from my peers surrounding me playing the game. I noticed that this game is very similar to playing a deck of cards with characters like spades, hearts, cloves, diamonds, kings, queens and jacks. It is also similar to poker, and I presume that during the Qing dynasty this was probably used as a way of gambling between different people. 

Once the game is over, we shuffle the tiles and start again!

* Note: all photos taken by me