Playing Mahjong

For those who do not know, mahjong is a gambling game that involves a great deal of memorization, skill, and strategy. I learned to play mahjong just two days ago and I bought a set today. You need four people to play and the Taiwanese version requires 16 tiles per hand and 18 per stack, giving a grand total of 144 tiles. There are 4 suits and many many rounds. I am not entirely sure why you pull from a certain person's stack or how the hosting system works.

This game was the one game (plus other gambling games) that my dormitory prohibited. I thought it was a bit weird to be specifically listed on the list of rules for my housing, but I understand a little bit more. The game is usually played all day with very large tiles and involves a lot of yelling. The players slam the tiles down and usually other vices go along with it. I hope to teach a lot of people at home this game, because it has a very long tradition in Chinese culture. It is rumored that Chinese aristocrats only played the game, keeping the rules secret from the common class until the 1911 revolution. There are many stories about this game and it is more widely played than most realize. The game was banned under the communist government in 1949 in China as a symbol of capitalism.

There are American, Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese and other versions of the game. I am certain that many people remember the computer game from Windows 95, but that is just the Shanghai Solitaire version.

My teachers, the APC fun squad at Atos Origin in Taipei are responsible for instructing me to play. We played again today on campus outside the 7-Eleven. We are not good enough to even start gambling money, and are only playing for fun. It helps to know a little bit of Chinese, because most of the characters are pretty common ones. In particular, the numbers in Chinese are a particular example.

See the Wikipedia article for more information, including the rules and assorted history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong