Game pieces for mah jong, bamboo and bone, late 19th century. Brooklyn Museum, gift of the Long Island Historical Society. Photo Brooklyn Museum, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
American mahjong
What it took directly
- statedMah-Jongg (the Western game) took from J. P. Babcock's 1920 rules, which first put English index numbers on the tiles"In 1920 the English index numbers for the tiles were first introduced by the author and the first edition of these rules appeared." J. P. (Joseph Park) Babcock, preface to Babcock's Rules for Mah-Jongg (second edition, Shanghai, 1923)
- documentedMahjong's 1920s American craze took from Parker Brothers, which sold sets in American shops"The game manufacturer Parker Brothers (now a subsidiary of Hasbro) helped to popularize mahjong in 1920's American retail outlets" Ashley Walters, Stanford Report (2013), on historian Annelise Heinz's archival research
- documentedThe National Mah Jongg League's "national" game took from a fall 1937 meeting at New York's Essex House, called by Viola Cecil, where nearly 400 women set out to standardize the rules"Ladies from across the New York region gathered to answer the call by Viola Cecil, president of the newly formed National Mah Jongg League and a resident of Essex House, to standardize the rules of the game." Annelise Heinz, historian, in Tablet (2021), from her book MAHJONG: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture (Oxford University Press)
- documentedThe League's version of the game took from Dorothy Meyerson's "streamlined" rules, from her rulebook That's It!"Although she admitted, “No one person created the new way to play,” her version of the game was nearly identical to the form that the league adopted." Annelise Heinz, historian, in Tablet (2021), from her book MAHJONG: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture (Oxford University Press)
- documentedAmerican mahjong sets after the Second World War took from plastic fabricating shops in New York City, which replaced the makers in China"After World War II the locus of mahjong manufacturing for the American market moved from China to plastic fabricating shops in New York City." Annelise Heinz, historian, in Tablet (2021), from her book MAHJONG: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture (Oxford University Press)
What it learned to do
- statedAmerican mahjong learned from 1920s and 1930s playing groups that each invented their own combinations of tiles"It wasn't long before every group had its own combinations, leading to a fair amount of confusion in the game-playing community." National Mah Jongg League, its own history page
- documentedAmerican mahjong learned from the changes women players made in the 1930s: no chows, hands limited to those listed on a card, and a new card every year"The female players threw out "chows," restricted the hands to groups of similar tiles as listed on a card, changed the use of the flowers, and the NMJL issued a new card every year." Tom Sloper, Sloperama American Mah-Jongg FAQ
- documentedThe League's game learned from Dorothy Meyerson's free in-store lessons, and the women agents who taught at department-store clinics and sold her rulebook"these consumers not only shopped but also learned “the new way to play” mahjong at Meyerson’s free in-store lessons," Annelise Heinz, historian, in Tablet (2021), from her book MAHJONG: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture (Oxford University Press)
- documentedThe National Mah Jongg League's yearly card learned from a group of volunteer women who play out new hands each year from August to November"Starting in August, a group of women come together with their thoughts on what the new card should be." Ellie Gettinger, Jewish Museum Milwaukee (2016), after visiting the League's New York office, run by David and Larry Unger, who took over from their mother, Ruth Unger
- documentedAmerican mahjong learned from Jewish American women, as the leaders, entrepreneurs and game-smiths who built it"they held powerful positions as "leaders, entrepreneurs and game-smiths who created and nurtured American mahjong," especially through the development of the National Mah Jongg League in New York." Annelise Heinz, historian, quoted in the Stanford Report (2013)
The tradition it sits in
- inferredThe National Mah Jongg League's standard card comes from the urge, already in Babcock's 1920 rules, to standardize the game in writing"so simplified and standardized in form that it could be easily mastered by a set of written rules." inferred — Babcock (1920) and the League (1937) each set out to standardize the game on paper; no source draws the line from one to the other
- statedBabcock's Mah-Jongg comes from the Chinese game, adapted for players outside China"It was the author’s intention to produce a game which would include many of the interesting features of the old Chinese game adapted to foreign thought and custom," J. P. Babcock, preface (1923)
- documentedAmerican mahjong comes from mahjong's earlier American rules, which the League took as its starting point and remade"the league took a shared reference point from mahjong’s American past and transformed it into something new." Annelise Heinz, historian, in Tablet (2021), from her book MAHJONG: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture (Oxford University Press)
- documentedAmerican mahjong comes from mahjong, a Chinese game that game experts generally place near Shanghai in the mid- or late 1800s"Although the history of mahjong is contested, game experts generally agree that it evolved near Shanghai in the mid- or late-1800s." Stanford Report (2013), on Annelise Heinz's research; it notes that the game's history is contested
Where the whole form comes from
- documentedMahjong comes from a Chinese card game whose suits were copied from Chinese paper money"The Chinese game we call ma-jong is a recent Chinese modification of this Chinese game played with paper cards derived from Chinese paper notes," Stewart Culin, Brooklyn Museum Quarterly (October 1924)
- documentedMahjong comes from the card game Cantonese laborers in America were still playing on narrow cardboard strips when Culin wrote in 1924"The old Chinese money-derived card game, the immediate source of ma-jong, was and is still played by Cantonese laborers in America with narrow strips of flexible cardboard" Stewart Culin, Brooklyn Museum Quarterly (1924). He adds that these players knew nothing of ma-jong as Americans played it; they are not named in the record
- documentedThe name mahjong comes from má tséuk, "sparrows", the Cantonese name for the cards"má tséuk, "hempen birds," i. e., "sparrows," the last name a transliteration of the Cantonese pronunciation of the name we know as ma-jong." Stewart Culin, Brooklyn Museum Quarterly (1924), citing W. H. Wilkinson's catalogue
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