words stephanie wu
translation kennis lai

Is it iniquitous or just fun? The Mahjong World Series focuses attention on a game loved by some, scorned by others

On September 19, mahjong players from around the world will surrender US$5,000 in registration fees for a chance to win glory and a US$500,000 first place payout at the Mahjong World Series, hosted at Macau’s Wynn Casino.

For some, the entry fee is an obvious gamble, but from his tone it is clear. Rules Director Alan Kwan sees a big difference between the spirit of the World Series and that of gambling in Hong Kong’s mahjong parlours.

As rules director, Kwan’s responsibility is to maintain a standardized set of rules for the tournament – facilitating high-stakes gambling is hardly his priority. “I’m trying to refine the rules so that, as well as being good for high-level tournament play, the rules should be simple and easy to learn so as to welcome new players,” he says, explaining that mahjong rules differ widely from province to province, and that game customs are sure to vary among participants from places as diverse as the US, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Canada and Australia.

Kwan lists three factors he considered when drafting the rules three years ago: the standard competition rules of local tournaments in China and Japan, the original mahjong rules from 1900’s China and the scoring system of ‘new style’ mahjong, as developed around 50 to 70 years ago. “I adopted the classical rules because I believe mahjong has been designed by someone and, although some of the history has been lost, I think it would make sense that we try to bring the game back to the form which the original designer would like to see it being played today,” Kwan says.

When asked about HK’s mahjong parlours, however, Kwan’s authoritative tone (he’s writing a book on mahjong history and strategy) becomes more apprehensive, terse and cautious. “I never go there. I’m sorry I can’t help you. If you do not frequent those places, they [the people affiliated with the betting houses] want to keep you away. I can only give you an outside view,” he apologizes, indicating the parlours’ reputation as a ‘grey place’ for gambling.

Kwan uses the language of ‘them’ and ‘us’ to respectively describe those who frequent the parlours and those who do not: “For us, we don’t know whether they’re doing anything else [suspect], but we know they are gambling high stakes and gambling with strangers. When mahjong is being played in a parlour, it stops being a game and becomes a hardcore gamble.”

Yet a conversation with Mr Cheng, cashier of Yat Lee Mah Jong Company in Sham Shui Po (181 Cheung Sha Wan Road), reveals a more economically based perspective, a more amicable ‘insider’s’ take on parlour culture.

Upon welcoming us – a translator and me, recorder and notebooks visibly in hand – with tea to his counter at Yat Lee, Cheng, who has worked at eight parlours during his 20-year stint in HK’s mahjong gambling facilities, assures us that betting activities inside are entirely legal. “Nowadays the government won’t issue a new license to any mahjong parlours, but they used to exclusively give gambling licenses for mahjong,” he says, speculating that outsiders are afraid of the parlour scene due to exaggerated accounts of triad involvement.
Spectators or journalists, however, are not usually free to saunter amongst the gamblers. Cheng, admittedly, is my translator’s uncle, and informs us that if strangers were to approach him with such questions as we did – including about the stakes of each game and the commission the parlour collects – they’d be suspected as tax collectors and ignored.

Yet Cheng does express an open attitude toward players. Though all the patrons seem to fit a middle-aged Chinese working-class demographic – with about one female to every four males and the same ratio of non-smokers to chain smokers – he assures us that anyone above the legal age of 18 would be allowed to participate. “As long as he knows how to play, of course he’s more than welcome,” he says, qualifying that by noting he has never seen a non-Chinese in any parlour where he worked.

To suit Cheng’s openness, full-blast air conditioning and flickering fluorescent lights make the low-ceilinged room less of a smoke-filled den of disrepute (not even drinking is not allowed, for lack of a liquor licence) and more akin to a school cafeteria. And despite Kwan’s warnings of patrons’ hostility toward non-gamblers, there is hardly a double take at our entrance, the sloshing of tiles against the wooden tables eclipsing any sound of our presence, and everyone’s furrowed brows far too fixed on their tiles to see two initially apprehensive journalists stumble in awkwardly.

According to Cheng, a nightly loss by one person might reach upwards of $30,000. “Some people are betting their life, all their money. It’s not relaxing at all. Some need money for emergencies, for themselves or for friends. Maybe for medical fees, debts, etc,” he explains.

Cheng estimates that HK’s parlours have been around since the 1960s – the one at which he works is approximately 30 years old. “Business in these few years is not as good as in the past,” he admits, recalling a particularly slow period during the SARS epidemic. Nonetheless, the parlours, which originally only facilitated HK-style games, have survived by offering China’s classical style to immigrants from the Mainland as well.

Mahjong retailers, whose livelihood is based on others’ interests in the game, have a third, less enthused, view on the game. Of three mahjong shop owners interviewed, all cite the fact that their shops had been owned by previous family members as the only reason they were in the industry, and none had any knowledge of the game’s history.

“My father started this business after the war time, many people were unemployed and this was just an opportunity for them to earn a living,” says Ms Huen of Wing Wah Mahjong & Ivory Wares (Stall 2, Aberdeen St, Central, 9035 5848), who adds that she rarely plays mahjong herself. When asked why, she replies, “It’s just a matter of my personal interest, which has nothing to do with my job.”

Mr Ho of the 80-year-old Wing Cheong Ivory & Mahjong (101C Wellington St, Central, 2541 7517) agrees. Explaining why his father started the business, he says, “It’s just a way to earn a living, it doesn’t matter which industry you are in.” Similarly, for Mr Huen of Ying Fat Cheung Mahjong & Ivory (104 Waga Commercial Centre, 99 Wellington St, Central, 2544 3785), mahjong is just a fun game. “Chinese people just like it,” he shrugs.

Though a strategy and history enthusiast, Kwan – who, coincidentally, was a game shop owner himself before becoming rules director – agrees with Huen. Speculating on why mahjong – as opposed to its varying predecessors – survives into the 21st century, Kwan concludes, “It’s just an easy game and a rather good one. The propagation of a game really depends on whether it can arouse the interest of the people.” Yet Kwan says that HK people’s enthusiasm for the game is possibly declining. “It’s a matter of competition. Right now mahjong has a lot more competition as entertainment – we have video games, the internet, karaoke – these are things that were not available to the last generation.”

Which is unfortunate, since the livings of both shop owners and parlour workers seem to depend on the perpetuation of the game. And given that Kwan left the retail business because his own game shop could not earn enough revenue, his speculation on competing pastimes just might be enough to raise fears.

History and Symbolism

Contemporary mahjong scholar Tom Sloper, in his book The Red Dragon & The West Wind: The Winning Guide to Official Chinese & American Mah-Jongg (Collins Living, 2007), vehemently rejects accounts that mahjong is an ancient game and dates much of its development to the 1851 Tai Ping Rebellion of Ningbo. Sloper cites high-ranking officer Chen Yumen as the first to convert cards into tiles and speculates that some of the honour tiles were added by civil servants or royalty. Yet Sloper admits it is not possible to pinpoint the exact modifications made during the rebellion. Kwan agrees, explaining, “Mahjong was propagated mouth-to-mouth. In the past, a large portion of the population was illiterate, so it’s not surprising that the game hasn’t many records.”

Perhaps the most widely referenced historical source in current mahjong scholarship is the 1923 paper The Game of Mah-Jong by University of Pennsylvania ethnographer Stewart Culin, who concurs with Kwan’s dating of mahjong at the turn of the previous to last century. According to Culin, the tile-based game as we know it today evolved from older Chinese card games. “There is no essential difference between cards and dominoes [tiles] in China,” he writes, describing four of mahjong’s possible card-based ancestors. All of these variations – allowing anywhere from two to 20 participants – are, like mahjong, turn-based games where players pick and discard cards until one attains a hand of particular sequences and sets. All can also be played just as easily, if not more so, with tiles, Culin adds.

Mahjong also shares common suits with its ancestors, including the dot, bamboo and character tiles. These, Culin explains, are derived from ancient methods for organizing coinage, from individual coins (dots), to strings of coins (bamboo), to groups of strings (characters, in tens of thousands) – these actual coins were then converted to depictions on currency notes, then imported to card games, and finally to mahjong tiles. Culin adds that the flower and wind cards – north, east, south, west – were passed from Kan U, an earlier card game very similar to mahjong played by Chinese-American labourers at least as late as the 1920s.

As for the symbolism behind the honour tiles (winds, flowers, dragons), Sloper explains on his website, www.sloperama.com, that both flower and wind cards represent the coming of the seasons (spring from the east, summer from the south, autumn from the west, winter from the north). The dragon cards signify gems based on their colour (ruby, jade, pearl), with the green ‘fa’ character indicating fortune, the red centre character representing another direction in addition to that of the cardinal winds.

Plays and Wagers

While Sloper’s website lists at least 32 styles of mahjong, all are similar to many Western card games in which the object is to be the first to obtain significant sequences or sets via a system of exchange and rearrangement of one’s hand. For mahjong, this system involves picking up and discarding tiles and building hands from four double-decked walls of approximately 34 tiles arranged in a square or from a discard pile in the centre. Desirable sets include Pung (three of a kind), Kong (four of a kind) and Chow (three consecutive tiles of one suit). Play ends when the winner attains four sets plus one pair of identical tiles.

The many styles – from Asia, the Middle-east, North America and Europe – vary in the number of tiles used (ranging from 72 to 176, with most between 136 and 144), the number and types of special hands, the number of tiles per hand (from 4 to 16), the points allocated to each hand, and whether all players or only the winner scores at the end of each game.

While point sums range widely from single digits to hundreds and more, the counting style of Yat Lee Mahjong Parlour scores hands from one to 10, for ease of calculating payout. Rather than a complex algorithm for converting points to cash value, bettors choose between seven tiers of stakes, from 30/60 to 1,000/2,000, where the first number indicates how many dollars the losers must give the winner if he scores three or less, and the second, how much they give if he scores more than three. Commission is taken from the winner at a fixed rate (regardless of his score) tailored to the tier at which he plays, starting with $12 taken from the 30/60 level, increasing to $400 at 1,000/2,000.

Differing Styles

Analyses of the varying types of mahjong abound in print and electronic text, but with consideration to the scope of this article, we will only compare the variations pertinent to HK and to Kwan’s work with the World Series rules.

The three variants Kwan considered in drafting the World Series rules are Chinese Classical (CC), Chinese Official (CO), and New Style (NS). All use 144 tiles, with an optional reduction to 136 for NS (flower tiles can be omitted), and all play with a usual 13, though the first player draws 14 initially.

The three differ in the number of special hands: CC has the fewest (19 tile combinations); CO, slightly more; and NS, even more. Whereas CO and NS only tally the winner’s score, all CC players earn points. The protocol for scoring (sometimes point sums are multiplied) and point values also differ, though a detailed enumeration is beyond the scope of this article.

Kwan speculates that a fourth style, Hong Kong Old Style (HKOS, aka Hong Kong style, Cantonese Old Style), is the direct simplification of Chinese Classical: Flower tiles are optional, the style has far fewer special hands, and only the winner is paid. HKOS may sound similar to NS, but scoring differs widely between the two; for example, ‘concealed sets’ (ie sets completed by drawing from the walls, not from the discard pile) are rewarded with more points than exposed sets in NS, but not HKOS.

Information on style drawn from Sloper’s mahjong site, www.sloperama.com.