Good Morning! I told you before that I would write a blog on Mah Jongg since I started playing again after an absence of several years. Let me begin by saying it’s been a great time, I’ve met new people, have new friends. I guess that’s what gaming is all about. I’m going to begin by reading a poem written by a long time Mah Jongg player named Jelte Rep.
Come…
Come and let the wind take you
to where the winds gather
and three dragons meet.
Come to the square center of the world
where the wall keeps the ghosts at a distance,
where the moon reflects off the bottom of the sea
and where the flowers blossom on the rooftop.
Come and be seduced by Mah Jongg
game of the 100 wonders
game of 10,000 options
game of the sparrows
game of the winds
game of the dragons
game of dumb luck
game of sharp reasoning
game of 100 wars
game of 100 victories
game of 100 thoughts
game of poetry
game of symbolism and wisdom
game of greed and rotten luck
game of beauty and refinement
game younger than the singing of the bird
game more bewitching than the sunrise
game so easy to play
game so hard to control
game so hard to resist.
There been many questions about the age of Mah Jongg and where it began. Some people speak of centuries some people speak of a millennium. There are even people who think that Mah Jongg was played on Noah’s Ark to pass the time. There are several games that precede Mah Jongg,but in its present form Mah Jongg is a little less than 200 years old 1200 years ago a courtesan in the Tang Dynasty played a game with 32 cards that happen to be made of wood and ivory. There are one or two sets of these cards in a couple museums. They look a little bit like Mah Jongg tiles but probably look more like regular playing cards. 700 years later, they added more cards including bonus cards. Around 1846, a Chinese Imperial servant combined several different games change the cards to tiles and basically created Mah Jongg. The game was a hit! Because there were no written rules, each home Providence, town, street, home, and family, each had its own version of the game. It could be said that Mah Jongg was as varied as a recipe for chicken soup. What is even more interesting is nowadays, the Chinese version is different than most of the varied Western versions. There are some basic rules of Mah Jongg that are the same no matter what version you play. That is to say, if you don’t play by the rules, you’re probably not playing Mah Jongg.
I grew up playing Mah Jongg the Chinese way. Simply put, I learned to play the game with no jokers, using seasons and flowers, and having a set number of special hands. I am now playing the Wright-Patterson form of Mah Jongg. It was developed by a group of officers wives in the late 1920s. There are three, for lack of a better word standard ways of playing Western Mah Jongg. There is the all-American, Maj, and military Mah Jongg. Most Americans play the all-American variant. Maj has eight jokers. Military Mah Jongg has a discipline, control, and orderliness. If you are playing Mah Jongg anywhere near a base you are probably playing military Mah Jongg. The most unique aspect of the armies playing rules are the dozens and dozens of bizarre special hands which American soldiers are so proud of, they had them copyrighte. When the cultural Revolution broke out in the People’s Republic of China Chairman Mao Zedong waged a cruel war against “for old ones”. They were old ideas, old cultures, old traditions, and old habits Mah Jongg was declared a waste of time and an onset to corruption and a very evil element. The game was forbidden and anyone caught playing Mah Jongg was punished in public. Chairman Mao died in 1976. The sins of Mao as it is known, is partially blamed on Jiang Qing, commonly known as his crazy wife. The ban on Mah Jongg was finally lifted in 1998 with a set of official playing roles which were established by the Ministry of sports affairs and forbid gambling.
There are some funny little rules for playing British Mah Jongg. In England the ruling party is called the British Mah Jongg Association. It guards over the regulations organizes tournaments and acts as a referee. If you’re familiar at all with Mah Jongg, tiles are shuffled face down then built into four walls. In Britain to players, usually South and North, never east mixed the tiles and tell East judges they been sufficiently shuffled and calls “Pow”. In Holland bonus tiles are not used. In France, you’re likely to hear “Je vous supplie: pas de grands jeux!”(I beg you: no special hands!) In Germany, you hope never to hear “Entschuldigung, Frau Müller, aber Sie haben eine tote Hand.” (I’m afraid, Mrs. Johnson, you have a dead hand.) In Italy, a dead hand, meaning the player can no longer Mah Jongg, sound something like “Scusi, Signore, Lei è Grandissimo Signore .”(Excuse me Sir, but your hand has too many tiles.)
Typically Mah Jongg is played with four players each representing a wind, ESWN ( East South West North, (eat soup with noodles).) However there are ways to play, two, three, or even five players. There are some very good books to teach you to play Mah Jongg, there are games on the Internet, where you can play real Mah Jongg, not the match two tiles Mah Jongg. There are probably Mah Jongg clubs in your local area. Gotta run, playing Mah Jongg today. (PS: I don’t know why the Italian is smaller than the other words. No insult intended, it just won’t change.)
I am The Arkenstone 