Despite mahjong being such a traditionally Chinese game, would you believe me if I told you that this Christmas holiday was the first time I had ever played it? My family didn’t have a set of tiles in the home growing up, and I guess we just found different games to play instead. However, since watching Crazy Rich Asians, my Mom has really wanted to teach our family how the game works. This year, we finally borrowed a set of tiles from a family friend, and we were off to the races.

• 1 set of Mahjong tiles (144 tiles)
• Square table

Instructions (Wikipedia)

I’m sorry for linking Wikipedia as the source for rules, but if I’m being honest, I couldn’t reliably explain the rules myself. I know just enough to stumble through a round of play, as long as there’s a more experienced player at the table to correct me, but that’s about it. To add to the confusion, I am sure that there are many variants and house rules out there, so when in doubt, ask your companions how they like to play and keep score!

As we were playing, the combination of strategy and luck really stood out to me. You need to know what pieces you want to be collecting and to keep track of what others are discarding, but you also need a bit of luck to ‘draw’ the pieces that you want. The game also opens itself to a lot of chatting as you shuffle the tiles and get set up, and I can see why people get in the habit of playing regularly with their friends.

My Mom joked that it was very hard to play with me and my brothers, as we would discard tiles in a very haphazard fashion. I think that we would need a lot more rounds in order to start playing more intelligently, but since we’ve returned the set of tiles to our friend, I’m not sure when our next opportunity to play again will be. However, I enjoyed the feeling of connection to my parents and Chinese culture through this game, and as always, I am thankful for the opportunity to do something together as a family. Are there games or activities that you feel similarly about? Maybe it’s a traditional game like mahjong, or one unique to your family, like an invented game? It could be anything!

Until next time, happy crafting!