American Mah Jongg Tutorial, Part I - Game Sets & Tiles

Mah Jongg is played by choosing and discarding tiles, until a player has assembled a winning combination of tiles, at which time, "Mah Jongg" is declared, and that round of the game ends. As far as I know, there is no limit to the number of rounds; Mah Jongg could go on for days, I expect, with the players pausing only to eat and nap.

Mah Jongg appears to be of Chinese origin, and the game became popular in the U.S. in the 1920s and '30s.  Lately, it seems to be experiencing a renewal in popularity.  For example, I've noticed that old Mah Jongg sets are selling on Ebay for increasingly higher prices.

Some early versions of Mah Jongg were played with cards, but most sets contain tiles made of ivory, bone, wood, bakelite, or other synthetic materials.  Each player has a rack to hold the tiles; the racks are often made of the same material as the tiles.  

My set comes in a faux crocodile skin case.  When I take it to someone's house to play, I feel like I'm carrying my briefcase to a meeting.

There's something about playing with the old Mah Jongg sets that satisfies the visual and tactile senses.  The tiles are often the color of butter or butterscotch; they are worn and smooth; the designs on old tiles often have interesting detail.

The exact number of tiles used varies, depending on whether one is playing traditional Chinese Mah Jongg or American Mah Jongg.  The version of American Mah Jongg I play requires 152 tiles and a pair of dice.

As with a deck of playing cards, Mah Jongg tiles are sorted into suits.  Three suits are numbered from 1 to 9, with 4 tiles of each number in the suit.

Bamboos (Bams)

Notice that the "1" Bam is represented by a bird.  This tile is sometimes referred to as the "Bird-Bam."

Characters (Craks)

Circles or Dots

There are two smaller suits: the Winds (North, East, West, and South) and the Dragons (Red, Green, and White).  There are four tiles of each wind and each dragon.

Winds                                                   

 

Dragons

Each dragon color is associated with one of the three major suits: the Red Dragons with the Craks, the Green Dragons with the Bams, and the White Dragons with the Dots.

American Mah Jongg also contains eight flower tiles, but the numbers on the Flowers have no significance.

Flowers

Older sets were originally designed for Chinese Mah Jongg, but American Mah Jongg is played differently, so old tile sets are often modified to accommodate American rules and procedures.  One difference is that American Mah Jongg uses Jokers, so spare tiles were often made into Jokers by painting the tops of them with red nail polish.

Jokers

Here are my Jokers, fresh from a new coat of fingernail polish.  I stood in the cosmetics aisle at Albertson's for quite a while, choosing the correct red for my set.  Of course, the color had to match the red kitchen.