

Other languages, such as Sichuanese, Shanghainese and Standard Mandarin, now call the game 麻將 ( májiàng), which is a nasal erhua form of the original name. It has also been suggested that the name came from an evolution of an earlier card game called Madiao from which mahjong tiles were adapted. It is said that the clacking of tiles during shuffling resembles the chattering of sparrows.


The game was originally called 麻雀 ( pinyin: máquè Jyutping: maa 4 zoek 3-2)-meaning sparrow-which is still used in several Chinese languages, mostly in the south, such as Cantonese and Hokkien. A group of players may introduce their own house rules which can notably change the feel of play. Beyond these basic common rules, numerous regional variations exist which may have notably different criteria for legal melds and winning hands, radically different scoring systems and even elaborate extra rules.
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While many variations of mahjong exist, most variations have some basic rules in common including how a piece is drawn and discarded, how a piece is robbed from another player, the use of suits (numbered tiles) and honors (winds and dragons), the basic kinds of melds allowed, how to deal the tiles and the order of play. A player can also win with a small class of special hands. In turn, players draw and discard tiles until they complete a legal hand using the 14th drawn tile to form four melds (or sets) and a pair (eye). In most variations, each player begins by receiving 13 tiles. The game is played with a set of 144 tiles based on Chinese characters and symbols, although many regional variations may omit some tiles or add unique ones. To distinguish it from mahjong solitaire, it is sometimes referred to as mahjong rummy. Similar to the Western card game rummy, mahjong is a game of skill, strategy, and luck. The game has also been adapted into a widespread online entertainment. The game and its regional variants are widely played throughout East and Southeast Asia and have also become popular in Western countries.

It is played by four players (with some three-player variations found in parts of China, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia). Mahjong or mah-jongg ( English pronunciation: / m ɑː ˈ dʒ ɒ ŋ/ mah- JONG) is a tile-based game that was developed in the 19th century in China and has spread throughout the world since the early 20th century. (Many of their families came from rural places in China where mahjong arrived around the same time it got to the U.S.) But their racial identity allowed them to claim an “authentic” authority to explain the game."Mahjong" in Traditional (top) and Simplified (bottom) Chinese characters These were mostly second-generation Americans who had not grown up playing the game. Prejudice kept them from jobs that were open to their white counterparts, but many found work teaching mahjong. The mahjong craze represented an opportunity for some Chinese-American young adults. Advertisers used images of mandarins, courtesans, and Confucius, creating an exotic image far from common degrading media stereotypes of Chinese-American laborers and laundry workers. But, in the U.S., marketers portrayed it as an ancient tradition. It evolved around Shanghai in the nineteenth century and began spreading to other Chinese cities by the early 1900s. Heinz notes that mahjong is a modern game. Social reformer Miriam Van Waters warned that juvenile delinquency was on the rise because mothers were too absorbed in mahjong and bridge. White women’s interest in the game irked some cultural critics. Mahjong provided an outlet for them to try out “exotic” sexy outfits and behavior. Similar things were happening among middle- and upper-class white women in cities around the U.S. One reported that the attendees were “determined to be desperately Chinese in action and dress”-either buying embroidered robes for the occasion or just wearing their husbands’ pajamas to create the suggestion of loose silk pants. Local newspapers ran photos of the participants in beaded headdresses and silk robes. Heinz describes a 1922 “high-profile philanthropic mahjong party” put on by elite white women in Los Angeles. The attendees were “determined to be desperately Chinese in action and dress.”
