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Learn how to play mahjong in 2.5 minutes

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[Go to main index][Go to linguistic index][Contact the author][Läs denna sida på svenska]
© 1997 - 2002 Patrick Hassel Zein

This page was last updated 12.05.2002

(also called "Mahjong", "Mah-jongg" or, in Mandarin Chinese, "Ma Jiang")

The regular European rules for Mah-jong are widely known, and you may find them around the Net. On this page I will present the somewhat simpler rules fromHong Kong and China, that will give a quicker and different game.
I've also made a little "cheat-card".

Hong Kong Rules

General Modifications of the Rules

Forget all about "sitting on a rock". You don't need to tell the other players when you are waiting for the final tile to complete a Mah-jong hand. You simply declare your Mah-jong when you get it.

The Hong Kong rules are basically identical to the regular rules, but the counting of scores is made according to a different and more simple model. When you don't need to spend as much time in calculating the scores, the game becomes different, quicker and, in my eyes, more fun.

Counting the scores

Only the person that gets a Mah-jong calculate scores and cash markers. Payments to and from the wind of the round are not doubled. If no one gets a Mah-jong in one hand, a "dead game" is declared and no score is calculated. The winds are shifted after each hand no matter if the wind of the round won or lost. However, the winds are to remain the same after a "dead game". An entire game will always consist of exactly 4 rounds consisting of 4 hands. Please note that it's important to see the difference between scores and amounts payed!

Below is a list that is divided into eight sections. Scores are only given to one of the specifications under each section. A realy good hand can in the best cases give a score consisting of eight points.

One Special Hand
Seven pairs – a special hand consisting of seven pairs will entitle you a Mah-jong-bid worth 4 scores. In addition to this, you are also entitled scores according to sections b, f, g and h in the rules above.
Only Five Hands With Maximum scores

1)

One:s and Nine:s / Thirteen Miracles; handen a hand consisting of tiles 1 and 9 from each suite, one of each dragon and wind + one more of the mentioned tiles.

2)

Gates of Heaven / Sitting on Nine Rocks; a hand consisting of three 1:s, three 9:s, tiles number 2 to 8 from one and the same suit + one more of the mentioned tiles.

3)

Pearl Dragon; only pung:s/kung:s of circles + white dragon.

4)

Jade Dragon; only pung:s/kung:s of bamboos + green dragon.

5)

Ruby Dragon; only pung:s/kung:s of characters + red dragon.

(The hands named Heavenly Blessing, Earthly Blessing, Heads & Tails and the Hidden Treasure regularly give maximum score, but are not included in these rules.)

Payments

Sum up the points (the theoretical maximum is 23, but it's usually difficult even to get ten). Translate the score to an amount (the number of markers that each player is to pay the winner) with this simple table:

Level Total score Payment

The person throwing the tile that gave the winner a Mah-jong, must always pay the double amount. If the winning tile was taken from the wall or the ruin, all players must pay the double amount of markers. These doublings are not valid for hands that give maximum score.

Punishments

If a player has laid down visible combinations of nine tiles from one and the same suite, it's to be regarded as a warning - you can suspect that the player is waiting for a final tile from the same suite, which means it'll be a valuable hand. If you at such a time throw a tile from the same suide and the player actually does get a pure and valuable hand, you will be punished to pay the debts for all three loosers when the score has been calculated for the winner (if you count on this, you'll see that the cost will be at least 64 markers).

If a warning has been noted for one player, you throw a tile from the same suite, and that other player picks up your tile to produce 12 visible tiles from one suite, you must remember this. That other player is now waiting for the last tile to complete his/her hand. If the missing tile is picked from the wall or the ruin, and the pair is in the same suite as the other tiles in the hand, (againg a pure hand), you must pay double amounts for all three loosers to the winner (and this will get even more expensive - a total of at least 192 markers!). Your only saving would be if an other player throws the winning tile and thereby gets the punishment instead of you.

The punishments are there to force you to play defensively! In the same spirit, punishments should also be given if you allow a player to get a hand of honours or a hand with maximum score that could be foreseen in a similar way.

Free Additions

Forbid players from winning with chicken hands. You may decide a minimum score of 1, 2 or 3 points for Mah-jong bids before a game (higher demands would be too difficult).

A maximum punishment may be given for an incorrect declaration of Mah-jong or a hand with too low value. The hand is then cancelled and the person that made the mistake will pay 128 markers to each other player.

An experienced Mah-jong player knows that it isn't always most important to win, but also to prevent the other players from wining. Therefor there is a possibility to ad a "Five tiles punishment"; if, at the end of one hand, there are five or fewer tiles left before the ruin is reached, and you throw a tile that has not been thrown or shown in the current hand (a tile that it's very likely that someone is waiting for) and someone makes a Mah-jong with that tile, you must pay the debts for all three loosers.

"Cheat-card"

For those that find it difficult to remember the Chinese characters (which is particularly handy to know, if you don't have European text on all tiles) and what hands will give you maximum score (without revealing yourself by asking the other players), I've put together this little "cheat-card":

Modern Chinese Rules

How Mah-jong is Played in Contemporary China!

Before starting to play, you distribute the cards from a regular deck of cards evenly among the players.

Don't bother about the winds - it doesn't matter who is playing which wind!

Forget all about "sitting on a rock". You do not need to inform the other players that you are waiting for the last stone that will complete your Mah-jong. You simply present your Mah-jong when it has become a fact.

When a player wins a hand, you don't need to count any scores. The other players simply give the winner one card each. You simply play without putting any efforts for high scores or nice hands. This will make the game even quicker than with the Hong Kong rules.

I SUSPECT that the Chinese will cash their cards for a given amount of money after a finished game, but I've never dared asking - and if I dared ask, the Chinese would probably not dare answer anything else than "But nooo!"...

Interested in some more Chinese games?
See also my description of the Chinese card-game Strike Big Brother!

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Go to main index] [Go to linguistic index] [Contact the author] [Läs denna sida på svenska] © 1997 - 2002 Patrick Hassel Zein This page was last updated 12.05.2002 (also called "Mahjong", "Mah-jongg" or, in Mandarin Chinese, "Ma Jiang") The regular European rules for Mah-jong are widely known, and you may find them around the Net.

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Mahjong scene

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Crazy Rich Asians

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Guest Post by Jeff Yang

One of the most beautiful things about Crazy Rich Asians is how it refuses to explain many of its most intrinsically Asian elements. That lack of training wheels is intentional: As director Jon M. Chu told me, "We didn't want to give people an excuse to think of this world as some kind of obscure, exotic fantasyland -- this is a real place, with real culture, history and tradition, and instead of just giving them answers to their questions, we want them to have conversations."

The movie's Singapore-specific local color and broadly Asian cultural nuances are indeed fairly Google-able, and can readily be contextualized through polite discussions with actual Asian people. But there's one scene in particular that has been resiliently enigmatic to audiences of many backgrounds, both Asian and non-Asian... and it's a pivotal one: The mahjong scene.

That's especially true for fans of the book, who won't recognize it -- it's original to the movie. It was inserted in part because Michelle Yeoh, who delivers an amazing steel-and-silk performance as the movie's main antagonist, refused to play the stock, villainous tiger mom from the book. This scene provides her with critical impetus toward her eventual redemption.

But it's also true for people who don't understand the complex rules of the game, which aren't intuitive and are often different depending on region of the world. So here's a quick primer on the game of mahjong itself, as well as its significance to the film in that pivotal scene. Spoilers abound starting here, so if you haven't yet watched the deliriously warm and funny movie, crawl out from under that rock and see it before reading further.

A quick primer on mahjong itself. A fast-paced, rummy-style game in which four players attempt to form sets of three or four matching or sequenced tiles, it's a hugely popular game not only across Asia, but around the world. Its origins are Chinese: all the way back in 1927, about a century after the game was invented, the Chinese scholar and essayist Hu Shi complained that mahjong was so popular that it had become China's "national pastime" - equivalent to baseball in America and cricket in England, calculating that the millions of games of mahjong played each day by Chinese were the equivalent of four million hours of wasted time a day.

But most Chinese don't see the game as "wasted time." In fact, despite his grousing, Hu himself was an inveterate player who spent many an evening tossing the tiles. Mao Zedong himself once said the game should not be underestimated - because "If you know how to play it, you'll have a better understanding of the relationship between chance and necessity. There's philosophy in mahjong."

In the movie, Rachel Chu, the protagonist brilliantly depicted by Constance Wu, is an economics professor at New York University who specializes in game theory (mandatory disclosure: Constance plays my son Hudson Yang's mother on the ABC television show Fresh Off the Boat). Her specialty was in no small part inspired by her childhood training in mahjong. As she says in the movie: "My mom taught me how to play. She told me mahjong would teach me important life skills: Negotiation, strategy, cooperation."

She ends up utilizing all three in the game she undertakes with her nemesis -- and prospective mother in law -- Eleanor Young, played by Michelle Yeoh.

When the scene begins, Eleanor has thrown a huge monkey wrench into the gears of Rachel's future with her son Nick (newcomer Henry Golding, who apparently bathed in suave then rolled in charm before each of his scenes). She has hired a private investigator to dig skeletons out of the Chu family closet, revealing that Rachel's mother isn't a widow as she's claimed, but a single mother who became pregnant with Rachel after an illicit affair, then fled China and her enraged, very much alive spouse for the safety of America. Shady!

The revelation makes Rachel persona non grata to the Young family matriarch, Nick's doting grandmother (the eternal Lisa Lu), and Nick is banned from spending any further time with her.

But Nick won't have any of it, and chooses to propose to her anyway.

The mahjong scene begins immediately afterwards. Rachel invites Eleanor to meet with her at a mahjong parlor - a gambling house frequented mostly by working or middle-class older folks who rent tables by the hour. This one is less seedy than most; many of them are in smoky, darkened basements, but this one is airy, well lit and silent except for the persistent clacking of tiles.

When Eleanor arrives, she takes the open seat across from Rachel, and is offered the role of dealer - the "East" seat. The four seats in mahjong are named after the compass directions, which plays an important role both in the rules of the game and in the symbolism of the scene. Eleanor, in the role of the "East," representing Asia, is the player in control. Rachel, sitting across from her, represents America -- the "West."

The tiles have already been "washed" (e.g., mixed face down, like shuffling cards) and laid out in "walls" -- rows of 36 tiles stacked in two tiers. As dealer, Eleanor deals out the "hand" of tiles: first, she rolls the dice, and gets a 4 and a 6. She counts out to ten counterclockwise around the table, then counts to ten along the "wall" in front of the player picked, "breaking the wall" at that point and takes four tiles, with each player following suit until they have 12 tiles. A last tile is picked to make 13, and this is the players hand.

This is when the game truly begins. Players in turn pick up tiles and discard them, in an attempt to turn their hand of 13 tiles into four sets of three matched or sequenced tiles, plus an "eye" -- a matched pair. Altogether, a winning hand requires 14 tiles, and victory must be declared after taking the last and final 14th tile.

Mahjong is played in multiple rounds, with each player taking turns as East (the dealer) once during each round, and different patterns of "winning" hands have different scores. Randomly completed sets of matches and sequences might score just a single point, or none at all; hands with only matches (called "pong") or only sequences ("chow"), or all of one "suit," or containing certain honor tiles, will score more. Usually you can't declare mahjong until you have at least three points in your hand, so players may sit on "complete" hands and attempt to upgrade them, only ending the game when when they've maxed out their score - or to end the game before another player seizes victory.

So communication -- and negotiation, and strategy, and even cooperation - are far more critical in mahjong than in most card games. Watching what your opponents discard as well as the completed sets they lay out in front of them - when one steals a tile that another player has discarded, one must expose the completed set - is the key to understanding what each is attempting to accomplish.

Early in the scene, Eleanor completes a "pong," that is to say, she picks up a discard (a nine of circles) that Rachel has laid out, then lays out a matched set of nine of circle tiles. This is critical because it shows to Rachel that Eleanor is likely seeking to make a winning hand that is composed of "pong" matches. Eleanor tells Rachel that her mother taught her how to play too.

At this point, we lose track of the tiles being discarded while the conversation continues. Rachel asks Eleanor why she didn't like her from the very beginning - even before her family history was revealed. Eleanor responds with a disquisition on the difference between Asians and Americans, noting how even though Asian Americans look Asian, they are American at heart. Referencing a Hokkien term that means "our kind of people," she says that Asian Americans are not " kaki lang." Remember, in this game, Eleanor is trying to create a winning hand that is all matches -- an "extended family" that's metaphorically composed of "kaki lang."

The camera cuts back to the discard tiles to show a number of discarded bamboo tiles (the three, the six, and the nine) as well as two wind tiles -- dong, the East wind, and xi, the West wind.

Discarded bamboo calls to mind a frequently used term for Westernized overseas Asians, this one Cantonese: " Jook sing," which literally means "empty bamboo." It's a slang term that's the Chinese equivalent of the Asian American term "banana" -- yellow on the outside, white on the inside -- cited earlier in the film by Peik-Lin Goh (the frenetically hilarious Awkwafina). The "empty" bamboo tiles are scattered alongside the tiles for East and West, not truly part of either. The discard tiles have become a portrait of Eleanor's perception of Rachel.

At this point, Rachel drops the bomb on Eleanor that Nick proposed to her, telling her that he said he'd be willing to walk away from everything, his family, his family's wealth, to be with her. Right as Rachel is saying this, she draws the most important tile in the game: An eight of bamboo.

The number eight is symbolically of huge importance to Chinese; it resembles the character for fortune, and is considered a sign of wealth, prosperity -- and happiness. It's why so many Chinese license plates, phone numbers and even street addresses contain eights. Monterey Park, the first city in the San Gabriel Valley to become a suburban destination for wealthy Chinese, was considered a particularly propitious place to live because it had an 818 area code.

While an eight doesn't have special value in the game of mahjong, we see that the eight of bamboo is also the one tile Rachel needs to complete her hand -- a hand full of bamboo melds and honors tiles. This is a winning tile for her. But Rachel knows something else, based on her observation of how the game has played out (remember, she's a game theory professor!): It's Eleanor's winning tile too.

She then discloses to Eleanor that she turned Nick down. Eleanor is dumbfounded. "Only a fool folds a winning hand," she says, referring to Nick's proposal.

This is important, because in the very first scene of the movie, Rachel demonstrated through a poker game with one of her T.A.'s that to be successful in any game where psychology and choice are a factor, you can't play "not to lose" -- you have to play to win.

Rachel explains: when it comes to her marriage with Nick, Eleanor has guaranteed there's no winning outcome for them. Nick choosing Rachel means he'd lose his mother and his family. Nick choosing his family means he might resent Eleanor forever - thus losing his mother anyway. Lose-lose.

So she decided to seize control of the situation, and choose for him. But she doesn't want it to happen without Eleanor knowing exactly why it's happening and what Rachel is giving up to make it possible.

She tells Eleanor that she knows Nick will eventually find someone else, someone that his family approves of - that's what every generation of Youngs has done before him, after all. And while her own heart will be broken, as she says, she loves him so much that she is willing to suffer, if it means that Nick will keep the thing that is at the heart of Asian culture, and of his story: his family.

That's when Rachel throws the eight of bamboo out as discard -- folding her winning hand, knowing that Eleanor will pick it up and declare victory. (A sidenote: when Rachel does so, the player to her right moves to take it, but is overridden by Eleanor, because -- as Rachel knows -- Eleanor has control: If you're making a pong pickup to form a winning hand, you have the right to take a discard over someone who's just picking it up to make a single set.)

While this happens, she explains that when Nick finds the proper match in the future, she wants Eleanor to understand that the only reason it occurred was because a "poor, raised by a single mother, low class immigrant nobody" -- Rachel -- made it possible.

She then reveals her hand which would have won, making it clear to the whole table what she's done, and walks away. In the course of this game, Rachel has demonstrated to Eleanor three critical things: the first is that she loves Nick enough to put his future ahead of hers. The second is that she understands that family should always come first - something that Eleanor suspected she didn't comprehend as a jook sing, "banana" Asian American. And the third is that Rachel is a strong, self-sacrificing, courageous and hella-smart badass... kind of like Eleanor herself. Instead of "never being enough" for Nick, a line Eleanor uses to surgically destroy Rachel in an earlier scene, she's most likely exactly what Nick needs.

Knowing all of this context isn't necessary for the scene to work! But it certainly adds depth to it, doesn't it?

When asked about the mahjong scene, director Jon M. Chu told me: "For the mahjong scene, never thought we'd have to explain it," and laughed. "I wanted it to be very specifically choreographed, and obviously, for it to happen that fast is almost impossible. But I wanted to intercut the game with the conversation, so it was critical for them to know exactly what they were doing at every moment. We got a mahjong expert - basically a gambling addict! - to help choreograph that game, to make it authentic."

In case you're wondering, here's Rachel's winning hand, and the scoring she would have gotten if she'd gone out with it instead of discarding her lucky eight of bamboo:

An eye of "Red Dragons"; a matched set (pong) of North winds; a six, seven, eight sequence of bamboo, and two pong, one of fours of bamboo and the other of threes of bamboo.

She also had two "bonus tiles," which can entitle you to extra points. The first one is a Winter tile -- which is associated with the player sitting in the fourth seat -- and what appears to be a chicken tile (Singaporean mahjong sets have a unique addition of four animal tiles: the cat, centipede, mouse and chicken.

Of course, the chicken is meaningful in the scene and the movie because, as Peik-Lin points out, Rachel and Eleanor are engaged in a game of "chicken." In this scene, Rachel proves that she won't be the one run off the road. BUK BUK, BITCHES!

SCORING RACHEL'S HAND

If you're really curious, here's how Singaporean rules would have scored Rachel's hand:

Half Flush (hand composed of all one suit plus honors): 2 points

Fully Concealed Hand (no pong or chow sets revealed in front of her): 1 point

Animal tile: 1 point

She scores no points under Singapore rules for the flower, since it's associated with the 4th seat, which is neither her seat nor the "prevailing" seat (East is dealer in this hand).

That's 4 points, out of a typical maximum per round of 5. Every player would pay her $16, for a total of $48 for the hand. Singaporeans play a low-stakes version of mahjong!

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What was really happening in Crazy Rich Asians' pivotal mahjong scene

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Guest Post by Jeff Yang One of the most beautiful things about Crazy Rich Asians is how it refuses to explain many of its most intrinsically Asian elements. That lack of training wheels is intentional: As director Jon M.

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- a way to stay active and social

-help people stay mentally sharp

(AP photo/Bonnie Gruttadauria

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Play Mahjong

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This May 31, 2013 photo shows Judy Palladino handling mahjong pieces during a game night gathering in Mayfield Village, Ohio. For the baby boomer generation, getting together to play games is a way to stay active and social. It also can help people stay mentally sharp. (AP Photo/Bonnie Gruttadauria)

When Ron Riedel's kids graduated from high school, he and his wife, Lorita, found they were socializing less. They weren't meeting with friends at soccer games, school plays and other kid-related events.

So Riedel formed a "Baby Boomer" group through his church that hosts regular game nights and weekly dinners.

"When our kids were around, we had reasons to get together," said Riedel, 55, a furniture maker in Auburn, Calif. Now, "we had less excuses to get together, so we invented this."

The group plays everything from lawn games to Connect Four.

"It has nothing to do with the games," he said. "It's really just a social event."

As baby boomers age, many of the traditional ways to make friends disappear, said Lynda J. Sperazza, an associate professor at the State University of New York at Brockport, who studies how this generation spends its free time. Many start looking for new social outlets.

"Recreation and leisure is still of utmost importance. It is critical to their self-concept and sense of well-being," she said. "Game nights and boomer clubs are a means to be active, which is in sync to their values."

The Baby Boomer Club in Sun City Center, Fla., for example, organizes parties, dances and game nights, said president Linda Moore.

"It's strictly a social club," said Moore, who, at 70, is technically not a boomer. "Not everybody in the club is a baby boomer. It's people who want to go out and socialize."

The U.S. Census Bureau defines baby boomers as people born between 1946 and 1964.

That includes Debbie Schwartz, 52, of Mayfield Village, Ohio, who looks forward to a monthly mahjong game with friends.

"It's a real thinking game. It's great for keeping your mind sharp," she said of the Chinese game played with tiles.

Games do help people stay mentally sharp, said Dr. Martha Stearn, executive director of the St. John's Institute for Cognitive Health in Jackson, Wyo. Each fall, the institute holds a Brain Game Challenge with trivia contests, word games, Tai Chi demonstrations, sing-alongs and other activities. But Stearn said the social benefits of games and activities are even more important for brain health than the mental challenges are.

"We are programmed to be social. Isolation is one of the worst things for the brain," she says.

Schwartz, who started the mahjong group 15 years ago, said its six members don't take the game too seriously.

"We use it to talk and catch up," she said. "We've been friends for a long time."

Fellow player Judy Palladino, 57, said she and her husband, Vince, like the excuse to get together with their friends. The husbands often play poker while the women play mahjong.

"We're all older. We're tired. It's nice to come home and do nothing. It's also important to stay active and connected with old friends," Palladino said.

When the couple recently bought a second home, in Florida, they chose a community that organizes recreational activities. "That was really important in our search for a Florida house," she said.

They picked an over-55 community in Sarasota where Palladino has found a mahjong group.

Tracy Weller found a monthly Bunco game when she moved to a new neighborhood in Wexford, Pa., in her 30s. Gathering with other moms in the neighborhood to play the dice game was a good excuse to get out of the house, she said. Now 49, Weller is a substitute player in the group; she gave up her permanent spot because her two teenage daughters have such busy schedules.

"I enjoy it when I get to go," she said. "It's my connection to what's going on in the neighborhood."

She anticipates returning to the group full-time when her daughters head off to college in a few years.

"I expect I will have more time to myself then," she said.

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Baby boomers finding new social outlets with games

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When Ron Riedel's kids graduated from high school, he and his wife, Lorita, found they were socializing less. They weren't meeting with friends at soccer games, school plays and other kid-related events. So Riedel formed a "Baby Boomer" group through his church that hosts regular game nights and weekly dinners.

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student worksheet

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student worksheet

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student worksheet

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基本用語說明

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The other honor suit is called arrows, or dragons. There are 4 sets of arrows tiles, and each set has 3 tiles. This threesome has several meanings which are derived from the ancient imperial exam, archery, and Confucius' cardinal virtues.

One tile features a red 中 ( zhōng, center). The Chinese character represents 紅中 ( hóng zhōng), which connotes passing the imperial exam, a hit in archery, and the Confucian virtue benevolence.

Another tile features a green 發 ( fā, wealth). This character is a part of the saying, 發財 ( fā cái). This saying translates to "get rich," but it also represents an archer releasing his or her draw and the Confucian virtue of sincerity.

The last character features a blue 白 ( bái, white), which represents 白板 ( bái ban, white board). The white board means freedom from corruption, a miss in archery, or the Confucian virtue of filial piety.

There is a total of 12 arrows, or dragons, tiles in each mahjong set.

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The other honor suit is called arrows, or dragons. There are 4 sets of arrows tiles, and each set has 3 tiles. This threesome has several meanings which are derived from the ancient imperial exam, archery, and Confucius' cardinal virtues. One tile features a red 中 ( zhōng, center).