Let’s
Be Friends.

The origins of American Mahjong date back to 19th-century China, during the Qing Dynasty, when the game was played mostly by men, as they conducted business in teahouses, gambling houses, and social clubs—the boardrooms of the times. The name “Mahjong” derives from the Chinese word for “sparrow,” as the distinct click-clack of shuffling tiles mimic the chattering of these hyper-social birds. (Also a nod to the lively social nature of the game.) The game reached America during the 1920s, sailing back with businessmen who had been taught the game during working voyages to Beijing and Singapore. Joseph Park Babcock is generally credited as having been the first to introduce and market the game to American audiences, publishing the “Red Book” in 1920 (a first attempt at simplifying and standardizing the game in America). The game spread like wildfire during the full-blown cultural craze of the times. Flappers were dancing, jazz was roaring, and soon everyone wanted a Mahjong set in their home. But early American Mahjong was somewhat chaotic, even despite Babcock’s best efforts. Rules were not universal. Hands were not standardized. Even game pieces varied between sets. Every table played the game differently. This ultimately impeded the social networking that helped make the game so popular. If Mahjong was going to survive in America—even in its varied form—it needed an overhaul.

Luckily, in New York in the mid-1930s, Mahjong found an entirely new heartbeat—in the living rooms of women in the Jewish community. The Jewish culture—steeped in tradition, ritual, philanthropy, and community building—lent order to the game, which could only be shared widely to the extent it was played uniformly.  In 1937, a group of these women—led by Dorothy Myerson—formed the National Mah Jongg League (NMJL) and American Mahjong as we know it was born and structure replaced the chaos. Players across the country now followed the same system; just one set of rules. The Charleston took shape—a distinctly American mark on the game. The rhythm solidified. The strategy deepened. What started as a largely male game in Chinese business circles evolved, in America, into a female-led social institution with community and philanthropy at its heart. Mahjong tables became places where women would build the villages they no longer inhabited, exchange news, share parenting strategies, build businesses, raise funds for important charitable causes, support one another, and carve out space in a world that hasn’t always make room for them at the table. This evolution wasn’t trivial. It wasn’t idle. It was strategic, social infrastructure disguised as play. Today, the modern American Mahjong table remains a strategic roundtable of life experience.

Mahjong is strategic and competitive—drawing on memory, mathematical clout, nerve, and of course a little bit of luck, as markers for success at the table. The game teaches pattern recognition, anticipatory response, calculation, and psychological assessment of adversaries. It exercises and strengthens the mind. It broadens social networks and builds quiet power. Because of this, the game was periodically restricted or banned, especially during revolutionary campaigns. Officially, the game was condemned as gambling or bourgeois leisure. Unofficially, however? Games that sharpen strategic thinking, strengthen skills for operating within rigid boundaries, and widen independent networks have a way of making regimes uneasy. Mahjong is badass. Happily, efforts to extinguish the game over the centuries were unsuccessful. Mahjong continued to spread far beyond its earliest hubs and has now evolved to include dozens of variations of the game that are played around the world, each with their own cultural or regional stamp on the Chinese classic. In mainland China, alone, there are more than 30 variants of the game! Old Hong Kong Mahjong is widely regarded as the version most closely resembling the original game—sharing the most characteristics and practices across these many variations. Mahjong enthusiasts everywhere should be sure to spend some time learning, playing, and appreciating this classic version of the game.

Today, the NMJL remains the sole arbitrator for all American Mahjong-related matters—resolving rule conflicts and evolving the game to more modern play. The organization still publishes the official annual card of Standard Hands and Rules—the backbone of American Mahjong. It boasts a membership of over 350,000 and with proceeds of the sale of its annual card, the NMJL has donated millions of dollars to worthy social causes and scientific research over its lifetime. In the wider Mahjong community, philanthropy remains centrally connected to the game, just as the NMJL founders intended.

Have fun.
Do good.

Click.
Clack.