On Chinese New Year's night, once the ancestor worship, family meal and distribution of red packets are over, what often takes center stage is the quintessentially Chinese game of mahjongg. For the Chinese, having a little flutter has virtually become a New Year's custom.
You'll find mahjongg wherever there are Chinese people. But rarely do the Chinese themselves know how mahjongg originated or how the name came into being. Why do the tiles include the north, south, east and west winds, together with the red dragon, green dragon and white? And what's the attraction of mahjongg that gives it the edge over other traditional gambling games such as Chinese dominoes or craps?
Mahjongg's compulsive hold over its aficionados can be seen from the following true stories:
A typhoon had forced Liu Hsiao-chen to cut short her trip down south, and worriedly she made her way back to Taipei. As she neared home through knee-deep flood water and in the pitch dark of a power blackout her anxiety grew. But stepping in at the door, there were her parents and a couple of neighbors happily engrossed in a game of mahjongg, playing by candlelight and with their feet perched up on stools. "All I could hear was the howling wind, the hissing rain and the clatter of mahjongg tiles," she says.
An old lady came to a plastic surgeon wanting double-fold eyelids. The doctor could hardly believe his ears; why should an elderly person want that operation? The old lady anxiously volunteered the explanation: "With my drooping eyelids I can't tell a three bamboo tile from a two bamboos, so I keep making false calls in mahjongg."
A man with a cold insisted on playing mahjongg all the same. His wife brought him some medicine and he swallowed it down and kept playing. When it was time to throw the dice they couldn't find them anywhere--all there was on the table were three pills for colds!
"It's like playing four hands of poker simultaneously." Control Yuan member Ku Chia-hua observes that the chances of drawing a tile of the same suit in mahjongg are slim indeed, "it's the unpredictability of it that's so fascinating."
Mahjongg can be played anywhere, any time, it's simple to learn and anyone can play. It isn't a rich man's game like golf, or as serious as bridge or go. You can either take it easy or stretch your mind by playing for maximum points, just as you wish. All this makes mahjongg ideal for people of any age, popular with rich and poor alike.
Mahjongg doesn't have a very long history. It's precursor is said to be a card game called "ma-tiao," played in the Sung and Ming dynasties, which had 40 cards painted with characters from the Water Margin and which already used the "ten thousand" character and the bamboo as symbols for suits.
According to the Ch'ing-pai lei-ch'ao, in the dialect of the Kiangsu/Chekiang region the word "tiao" means a bird. Thus the game "ma-tiao" came to be misunderstood as meaning "sparrow," which in Mandarin is pronounced "ma-ch'ueh." Mahjongg used to be called "ma-ch'ueh" in Chinese, but the Chinese name in current use, "ma-chiang," is what the name mahjongg itself is based on. Mahjongg was all the rage among the Ch'ing dynasty salt merchants of Yangchow. In the Tao-kuang reign (1821-1850) the Taiping rebel forces played it for relaxation, and in addition to the three original suits of circles, "ten thousand" characters and bamboos, the Taiping officers introduced the heaven, king, and four winds tiles, bringing the total to over 100 tiles. Initially a game for officials and soldiers, mahjongg gradually gained popularity among singing-girls until finally everyone in the Yangtze region was hooked.
According to another source mahjongg started with seven tiles bearing the characters for duke, marquis, general, chancellor, civil, military and hundred. A Chekiang deck hand called Ch'en Yu-men altered these to the four winds plus a red dragon, green dragon and white. These latter three tiles derive from symbols of wealth and success in Ch'ing society.
Later someone in Ningpo, Chekiang, no doubt feeling paper cards were too fragile, designed a set of bamboo tiles the size of bone cards, producing the mahjongg tiles we know today. At that time there were 136 tiles, with each of the four players holding 13.
A modern mahjongg set has 144 tiles, with each player holding 16. There are three suits: bamboo, "ten thousand" character and circle (in each suit the tiles are numbered 1-9, with four of each); in addition there are four tiles for each of the four winds, north, south, east and west, together with four tiles each of white, green dragon and red dragon; there are also eight patterned tiles, one each for spring, summer, autumn, winter, and prunus, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum. These patterned tiles are omitted when playing 13 tiles per player.
The basic principle of the game is to arrange your own 16 tiles, plus one more that you've drawn, to form five sets of three (which may be either consecutive sequences of three within any suit, such as 3, 4, and 5 of circles, or sets of three of the same, such as three east wind tiles) plus one pair (two tiles the same).
The first person to achieve this arrangement wins and makes the appropriate call; dumb players may bang the table instead. If you draw the winning tile yourself, you call "tzu-mo" and you are the sole winner, the other three lose. If another player discards the tile that allows you to win, he calls "fangp'ao" ("let off a firecracker").
Sometimes players forget to take or discard a tile during the game and end up with one tile too few or too many. When turn-of-century scholar Ku Hung-ming found himself one tile short he popped a tile he was about to discard into his mouth, pretending it was a quid of chewing tobacco.
Mahjongg is just a pastime, but if you sit back and play by luck it makes for a dull game, not to speak of the risk to your gambling stake. Many players take care to play their hand for all it's worth, memorizing which tiles have been discarded by the other three, trying to work out what's in their hand and which tiles they're waiting for, and minding not to "let off a firecracker" and discard just the tile they need to win.
Some people regret they only learnt mahjongg at university, otherwise they could have trained their memory and logical reasoning from their youth up. But "human calculation falls short of heaven's," and the fact that sheer luck is the most decisive factor in winning at mahjongg is mainly what has made it such a universally popular game.
A battle of wits and technique, but where luck plays a major role too, mahjongg keeps all four players on tenterhooks because, unless someone is in a class apart, all have a roughly equal chance of winning. This is where strength of character makes itself felt; no wonder they say a father may choose the best suitor for his daughter at the mahjongg table. The Chinese always like to observe the proper etiquette, set out in detail in the Ch'ing-pai lei-ch'ao:
1. Don't boast when playing, or speak angrily when losing.
2. Don't cheat, don't steal tiles or mark them, and don't lie to other players.
3. Don't try your luck and take improper risks.
4. Keep your hat on when you win, and pay with good grace when you lose.
5. Don't be greedy on a winning streak, and don't blame others on a losing streak.
Such gentlemanly advice elegantly pinpoints the faults most people are liable to display.
These days the NT$300 mahjongg sets generally available in Taiwan tend to be made of urea, a carbamide compound. Horn and bamboo used to be the most widely used materials on mainland China, while ivory or camel bone sets were for the wealthy. "I heard of a diamond mahjongg set made as a bribe during the warlord period," confides author Hsia Yuan-yu. Famous jewellery collector T'ang Jih-jung has a gold mahjongg set valued at NT$4.5 million. Most players, though, would find gold mahjongg tiles too heavy and glistening to enjoy using them for a game.
What's the big deal with mahjongg? The joy of drawing the winning tile, the pleasure of building a winning hand, or the warm glow of winning money?
In most people's experience, for a happy game of mahjongg you need the right combination of time, place and participants.
First of all, you need plenty of time on your hands to concentrate on the game with out someone having to quit in the middle, leaving the other three a player short. "Be sure where you play there's water, power, and a spare set of tiles," cautions United Daily reporter Wang Chen-pang, to thwart any excuse to make off while the going's good. The players should be good friends or associates prepared to observe the proper etiquette, "nothing ruins the atmosphere more than a loser who curses or refuses to pay," says Wang. Like match-makers in the past, mahjongg players need to choose the right partners from among their peer group.
Given the right conditions the players can happily go on until dawn breaks, one of them throws in his hand, or the money runs out, one of the three. And bearing in mind the relaxed, intimate atmosphere it generates, many people even say that mahjongg itself isn't the only reason for playing the game.
"I play mahjongg purely for mental relaxation," says busy director, scriptwriter, editor and publisher Hsu Jen-t'u. "If your brain's always on the go you can't give of your best or calm down properly." Playing mahjongg is one way of solving the headache: "I'm not concerned to win, and we're all good friends anyway; each tile I discard means another worry off my shoulders." Hsu quips his mahjongg may never improve that way, but his friends will always enjoy playing with him.
Some people turn to mahjongg at times of grief or distress. One often hears of people playing mahjongg with their friends to help ease the pain of bereavement or a broken heart. "Rounds are quickly over, and if your attention wanders you can easily 'set off a firecracker.' You have to concentrate," maintains a young lady named Wang. Mahjongg can even be a sedative, as a star by the name of Han discovered when she was about to have her first baby; the physician played mahjongg with her to relax her during labor, until all "three" of them went off into the birthing room.
There's also what's known as "political mahjongg," in which you lose to someone deliberately so as to curry favor with them. But you've got to be a real master of the game and know what tiles the other person needs. After all, if the wrong player won, the game would hardly be worth the candle, would it?
In the days when parental opinion was a major factor in deciding on marriage, suitors who failed to make an impression with their beloved might turn their attention to her mother and father. A few happy games of mahjongg could make them see the young man in a far more favorable light. This is another version of "political" mahjongg.
Some people encourage their elderly parents to play mahjongg, both for its social side and because shuffling and drawing the tiles stimulates nerves in the fingertips and helps prevent senile dementia. But a word of warning--elderly people cannot cope with too much excitement. One young lady saw her father's arm freeze in mid-air as he was calling out a win; a minor stroke brought on by excitement in this way can take six months to recover from. It has even been known for people to expire with sheer ecstasy at drawing a winning tile!
For Chinese far from home, mahjongg can be as important as a Tatung rice cooker.
"Our get-togethers as overseas students took the form of playing mahjongg and having a meal." Control Yuan member Ku Chia-hua, an M.A. from New York State University, explains that overseas students in the old days, strapped for cash and snowbound on campus in the wintertime, would always play mahjongg together.
Last Christmas some Chinese overseas students at Harvard thought of playing mahjongg to ease the pressure of work. But with the shops closed for the holiday there was nowhere to buy a mahjongg set. Finally they tried a Chinese restaurant, but the proprietor shrugged: "Sorry, we're using it ourselves." So they all tramped empty-handed back through the snow to their dorm.
Mahjongg, along with letters from home and martial-arts novels, is one of the great consolations of Chinese students in foreign parts. One gang of Chinese workers building a highway in a foreign country where gambling was outlawed even smuggled mahjongg tiles past the customs, secreted in their clothing one by one.
One of the early restrictions on Chinese laborers in America was that they couldn't take along their wives. Mahjongg became a way of easing their homesickness and the pressure of work. In Chinese-American director Wang Ying's film A Bowl of Tea you can see how a whole roomful of men used to play mahjongg together. And since so many Americans play mahjongg these days, how about classing it alongside kung-fu as another quintessentially Chinese world-beater?
Of course an occasional game of mahjongg does no one any harm, but there are people who see in it a dangerous menace, and they do have a point.
As a researcher at Academia Sinica has observed, mahjongg was a major pursuit within the communities of mainland dependents who crossed to Taiwan with the Nationalist forces in 1949. These people from all provinces of mainland China stuck together and initially had little social contact with the local community. Once their husbands had set off for work, many wives with time on their hands played mahjongg and helped popularize it on Taiwan.
But for the special circumstances of those days, many of these people would probably not have played mahjongg on the mainland.
"In the old days in the countryside we only played a few rounds of mahjongg when our thrift club paid up," says one old-timer from Anhwei.
Mrs. Chang from a merchant family recalls they were too busy to play mahjongg except at Chinese New Year, "then when I got married in Taiwan my husband was stationed away a lot and taught me to play." At first she lost every day, and with no money they lived on boiled water and rice congee. Finally she won three times in a row and became a mahjongg queen, "I won over NT$1,000--three times my husband's monthly pay!" Earning a little extra on the side was one reason why army wives took so keenly to mahjongg. Of course it was known for players to abandon their home and children and vanish into thin air to escape from mounting debts. Fortunately as army dependents' quarters have been transformed over the years, their reputation as "mahjongg villages" has become a thing of the past.
Mahjongg's good and bad points are six of one and half a dozen of the other, but when the government used to take a stern line on gambling even family mahjongg gamblers were liable to up to seven days' detention, community service or a fine. During a strict clampdown about ten years ago people injured themselves jumping from buildings or diving through glass windows when their mahjongg games were busted by the police. When actress Su-chu and her friends were caught red-handed by the police acting on a tip-off, she named another actor who lived nearby as her security for bail. Unfortunately when the police called he was playing mahjongg too, and promptly joined her behind bars.
But all this was a decade ago. Today the police are more concerned with arresting smugglers and armed gangsters, while new recreations such as KTV and electronic games have distracted attention away from mahjongg. But still the game goes on discreetly. In a recent debate on lotteries in the Control Yuan's finance committee, Ku Chia-hua suggested decriminalizing the playing of mahjongg at home in order to defuse people's obsession with gambling: "Gambling is a part of human nature, and banning it altogether only makes people seek ways to gamble illegally." Ku stresses that a controlled approach would be more effective than a total ban.
Meanwhile the National Police Administration has announced that the police will not take action against ordinary mahjongg games played for pleasure at home unless a protest is lodged by neighbors. But the police worry that legalizing mahjongg may open the way for professional gambling in the guise of domestic mahjongg games. Another aspect that merits serious consideration is the harmful effects on social mores and the family if a mahjongg craze sweeps the country again.
All the same, Japan has public mahjongg parlors, mahjongg is legal in Thailand and the Philippines, there are mahjongg schools in Hong Kong, and Taiwan itself continues to export mahjongg sets to Europe and America. The Chinese invented mahjongg, but who knows when it will become a legal "trademark of the Chinese"?
[Picture Caption]
With its square arena of tiles, mahjongg has been played in China for well over a hundred years.
An electronic mahjongg game provides fun for the solitary player.
(Right) Mahjongg tiles can be made of a variety of materials.
After a healthy weekend climb up the hillside a group of old friends play a pleasurable game of mahjongg at the top, where they can enjoy the cool breeze and the twitter of birdsong at the same time. (photo by Vincent Chang)
(Right) If you're stuck without Mahjongg partners in Japan, you can always go to a Mahjongg parlor, where the proprietor will fix you up with three other p layers. (photo by Huang Lili)
(Left above) The streets of Hong Kong provide ample evidence of mahjongg's popularity among residents of the territory. (photo by Lo Wei-chung)
(Left below) In Hong Kong it's customary to play eight rounds of mahjongg before a banquet. (photo by Lo Wei-chung)
This mahjongg shop in the Philippines has been in business for three generations. According to the proprietor most of the customers are Filipinos; one of his regulars used to be ex-president Ferdinand Marcos's mother. (photo by Chang Nan-i)
Cremating a paper mahjongg set for one's ancestors' amusement in the other world is a final act of filial piety.
An electronic mahjongg game provides fun for the solitary player.
Mahjongg tiles can be made of a variety of materials.
After a healthy weekend climb up the hillside a group of old friends play a pleasurable game of mahjongg at the top, where they can enjoy the cool breeze and the twitter of birdsong at the same time. （photo by Vincent Chang）
（Right） If you're stuck without Mahjongg partners in Japan, you can always go to a Mahjongg parlor, where the proprietor will fix you up with three other p layers. （photo by Huang Lili）
The streets of Hong Kong provide ample evidence of mahjongg's popularity among residents of the territory. （photo by Lo Wei-chung）
In Hong Kong it's customary to play eight rounds of mahjongg before a banquet. （photo by Lo Wei-chung）
This mahjongg shop in the Philippines has been in business for three generations. According to the proprietor most of the customers are Filipinos; one of his regulars used to be ex-president Ferdinand Marcos's mother. （photo by Chang Nan-i）
Cremating a paper mahjongg set for one's ancestors' amusement in the other world is a final act of filial piety.
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