Nearly every Tuesday evening, a handful of game players gather around Beverly Woodruff’s dining room table in College Station to play Mahjong (also spelled Mah jongg). Rebecca Laymon shares the game’s rules with first-time player, Linda Mills, who wants to learn the four-person tile game that originated in 19th-century China. The foursome plays the American version of the game, and begin by mixing 152 tiles, faced down on the table before stacking them in two rows in front of their respective racks.
“We've built a wall,” Rebecca explains. “So now we're going to start playing.” What follows is the civilized task of setting up the tiles based on specific rules that involves dividing and passing the tiles among the players while deciding which to keep.
“Do you see a bunch of consecutive runs? Do you see a bunch of even numbers? Do you see a bunch of odd numbers? That kind of gives you direction,” Rebecca explains as she peers over Linda’s shoulder. They compare Linda’s 13 tiles to the official scorecard, published by the National Mah Jongg League and the American Mah Jongg Association, that lays out all the possible winning hands.
Like a card deck, tiles have suits. But rather than hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades, the tiles’ suits are divided into craks, dots, and bams. There are also the four winds, dragons, flowers, and jokers. A winning hand is some combination of 14.
Many times around the table, the players pick up and draw tiles, either choosing the last discarded tile or drawing new tiles from the wall in the center. Each tile has its own name that must be stated when thrown away.
“Bam bird.”
“Soap.”
“Four crak.”
“North.”
“Flower.”
“Seven dot.”
“Wait!” Beverly says.
The other three players don’t move.
“Take.”
Beverly picks up the seven-dot tile, places it on the rack, and reveals her completed hand.
“Mahjong!”
Modern Mahjong
Donna Miller Kassman is no stranger to throwing Mahjong tiles. Although she did not play until she was older, she remembered bits of Mahjong rules her mother taught her as a child.
She says she and her friends started playing Mahjong about 10 years ago to socialize with one another. “The Temple was doing an event and started a local group,” Donna says. “I was like, ‘Oh, let me see if I
can pick it up again!’”
“If you ever said to somebody, ‘I’m going over to someone’s house to sit and talk and have coffee for three hours,’ you’d be like, ‘No, you have better things to get done,’” Donna says. “But if you’re going over to play Mahjong, that’s acceptable because you’re doing something.”
The idea for Modern Mahjong emerged after Donna’s mother passed away. Donna purchased a bone and bamboo set with money she inherited. After playing Mahjong with Donna that day, Dara Collins went online to buy dice but didn’t see any that had jokers made for that style of play, she says. “We researched and came up with the idea that Donna and I should make them.”
The two became business partners and formed Modern Mahjong. To start, they made 10 dice pairs with jokers. “My mom was our first purchase, and then all of a sudden, we just put them on one Facebook group, and we sold out,” Dara says. “There are a lot of players that play without jokers, so then we expanded to other styles.”
They received inquiries about other Modern Mahjong products and created their own replica enrobed set.
Dara’s friend, Jennifer Chase, became friendly when they formed a daytime Mahjong group. “It’s a small community, the Mahjong community, but [Dara] managed to really expand her business based on people from all over the country and internationally too,” she says.
All About Mahjong
Mahjong was introduced into the U.S. by an American expatriate living in China in the 1920s. Joseph Babcock, an American businessman, saw the game played in China and introduced Mahjong to the upper-middle class and the elite, Dara says. Babcock’s employment with Standard Oil was the driving factor behind the game’s delivery to the United States, according to Donna.
Mahjong swept the United States in the 1920s and hundreds of thousands of Americans purchased game sets, according to Annelise Heinz’s Performing for Mahjong in the 1920s. It was not uncommon for women during these times to dress in Western-influenced Chinese regalia and dress when playing Mahjong with friends. By the mid-to-late 1900s, middle-aged women were typically associated with the game.
Jewish women adopted the game in the 1930s, Dara says. “In 1937, Jewish women in New York decided they were going to come up with a more standard game where women could go and play at each other’s houses,” Dara says. “This group eventually led to the creation of the National Mah Jongg League.” At the same time, a form of
Mahjong known as Wright Patterson became popular among military wives, Dara says. Military spouses were constantly moving around, so the game was an efficient way to meet people.
The Mahjong community saw an increase in players during COVID-19, including spouses, due to their partners needing playmates, Dara says. She recalls middle-aged women playing Mahjong at their friends’ houses before the pandemic and how the global shutdown brought this to a halt. A Japanese version of Mahjong using anime characters also increased male interest in the game.
Mahjong can be valuable to youth because it requires them to put down their technology and make genuine connections with others, Dara says.
Donna agrees. “It’s a way to create community and socially interact for people of all ages,” she says.
For more information, visit modernmahjong.com
Those interested in playing Mahjong in the Brazos Valley, contact Beverly Woodruff at (903) 360-6580.
