The Asian Game of Mahjong, Which Creates Order Out of Chaos, Is Trending in the West

A 19th-century Asian game is lighting up TikTok. Mahjong, long synonymous with grannies at Chinese New Year, is attracting a new legion of fans. Mahjong clubs with light shows and DJs are forming in Los Angeles and New York; luxury hotels such as the Standard, East Village, in New York City are holding mahjong nights for their guests; and the game has also been given the nod by Hollywood as actress Julia Roberts revealed she plays mahjong every week with her girlfriends. The new generation of players is finding that the game, which the actress said aims “to create order out of chaos based on random drawing of tiles,” is not only helping people create social connections after the Covid-19 lockdowns, but also boosting their mental health.

Twenty-something Sarah Teng teamed up with friends Ernest Chan, Grace Liu and Joanne Xu to launch the Green Tile Social Club in New York City. At the pop-up mahjong club, light projections of ocean waves are beamed onto walls, while hoody-wearing mahjong fans, sitting four to a table, can be seen sipping on bubbly sake and studying their tiles. The familiar clatter of the mahjong tiles being slammed against the table is drowned out by the sounds played by the DJ traveling through the warehouse.

The Texans, who moved to New York separately after college, connected by playing mahjong at Teng’s apartment during the Covid-19 pandemic. While Chan learned the game by watching his relatives in Hong Kong, Teng was taught by international students she met while earning her master’s degree at the University of Texas at Austin. When they shared their game nights in New York City on social media, they found lots of budding Gen Z mahjong players who wanted to learn the 200-year-old game.

The first Green Tile Social Club event was held in 2022 around two concrete tables at the waterfront park called Pier 35, whereas their most recent event in January 2025 drew 700 people to a warehouse in Brooklyn, where guests were treated to mahjong tile tattoos and omakase. The Green Tile Social Club game follows the Hong Kong style of play. One difference from the more traditional game played by older players is that the tiles don’t just sport dots, character and bamboo symbols, but McDonald’s fries and Hello Kitty.

Teng says that lots of friend groups have been built within the club. “New York is a very lonely place,” says Teng. “I think the reason why the club has grown so quickly is because there was a gap in New York culture in terms of ways to meet people.”

Keis Ohtsuka, a psychologist at Victoria University in Australia and an expert on gambling cognition, has studied mahjong. “I [think] that the young people are attracted to the type of traditional culture where extended family members interact [as opposed to] this very individualistic world where everyone is left [on] their own to fend for themselves,” he says.

Angie Lin, 33, launched East Never Loses in Los Angeles in July 2024, which sprang out of Mahjong Mistress nights she co-founded with three friends during the pandemic. Gen Zers and millennials from L.A.’s creative or tech fields can be seen chowing down on plump pork belly baos while stacking their tiles. “[It’s] just a young, diverse group of people who are looking for connections outside of social media and the internet,” says Lin.

Lin, who worked in the record industry in Los Angeles, learned the game while working in Taiwan. Since its launch, East Never Loses has since run mahjong matchmaking nights—intergenerational nights where players will receive free entry if they bring someone from a different age group. The platform also held a mahjong tournament with a $1,000 cash prize. The next move for East Never Loses is to launch a mahjong set and live streaming. They are also liaising with new Gen Z-led mahjong clubs in Toronto and Berlin.

Mahjong has become a fast favorite with the fashion pack. The Standard, East Village and Ace Hotel New York hold mahjong nights, and the German luggage company Rimowa recently launched its Mahjong Attaché, with 144 tiles laid out in its signature grooved case. Interior designers are also being asked to include a space for mahjong in their designs. Jean Liu, an interior designer who works in Dallas and New York City, has seen an uptick in requests from clients. “They enjoy the game enough to carve out a spot for [mahjong] in a family or living room,” says Liu.

But this is just the latest permutation of the game, which could be seen as a mix of dominos and cards. It was created around Shanghai in the mid- to late 1800s and became a popular part of the port city’s nightlife and courtesan halls. Some say that its roots come from the ancestral card game ma diao, though historians have disputed this.

By the turn of the century, mahjong had reached the royal palace in Beijing, where it was played by the Empress Dowager. It was a game that crossed class and cultures. “It could be played for very high stakes or very low stakes,” says historian Annelise Heinz, author of Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture. “That’s very unusual for a game and is part of why it’s so socially flexible.”

It was given the name mahjong, which comes from the word for “sparrow,” due to the click-clacking sounds that the tiles made when shuffled, as it sounded like the chattering of sparrows. While sets could be made from ivory, the majority were made from inexpensive cow bone spliced with bamboo.

The game spread to Japan and Southeast Asia, and, in the 1920s, Standard Oil representative Joseph Park Babcock exported the game to the United States. Players included President Warren G. Harding and his wife as well as movie stars such as Mildred Davis and Bessie Love who were rumored to play. High-society women would host mahjong evenings, dress in Chinese costumes and serve their guests Asian food, while in Los Angeles, restauranteur Eddie Brandstatter would serve mahjong teas to his movie star guests who allegedly would skip the movie lot to enjoy them.

“One of the great ironies of this cosmopolitan jazz era, it was also deeply racist. The second Ku Klux Klan was really a mainstream national organization,” says Heinz. Yet people really were gobbling up this Chinese game, and that was largely down to it being marketed with supposed ancient royal roots, adds Heinz. Chinese Americans were also rejected by society. They were not allowed to own property, vote or testify in court, but they were able to take advantage of this brief window of economic opportunity to market themselves as mahjong teachers, even if they had also just learned the game.

As is the nature of fads, mahjong burned bright and then fell out of fashion in the United States by World War I. Yet, it didn’t completely disappear. The game remained an important part of Chinese American lives, and it was played by Japanese Americans in wartime incarceration camps. In the 1930s, Jewish entrepreneur Dorothy Meyerson created a streamlined version, which became the National Mah Jongg League in America. The American version of the pastime featured a card with a point system that would change annually. High-society Jewish women who took to playing mahjong in their social circles sold mahjong cards to raise money for charities.

While the West embraced the game, mahjong drew the ire of the Nationalist government in China in the early 20th century. Anti-gambling, the government restricted the playing of mahjong to Chinese New Year. But even before this, politicians thought the game didn’t fit with the country’s new outlook. “A lot of the reformers perceived mahjong as part of this old individualist past and they wanted to turn people’s energies toward [being] team players rather than individuals,” says Heinz.

Lifting the ban at Chinese New Year may have ironically added to mahjong’s popularity, though. During this time, millions of people would travel across the country to their ancestral homes, and the game would enable different generations to spend time together. The game continued to be played in China, except for ten years during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 when it was banned, as it was seen as a symbol of capitalist corruption. Now, almost 50 years later, the love for the game is stronger than ever.

More than 40 variations are played around the world today, although the core tiles and the way the tiles are shuffled and stacked to begin the game remain the same. Each of the players will draw 13 tiles. The game starts with the player sitting in the East position, and players will take turns to take and discard tiles in an attempt to create four sets of three tiles and a pair from their tiles. Variations of the game include the mahjong card in America, which is used for scoring, and eight joker tiles; in Singapore, the game is played with four extra tiles, which are decorated with animals. If you’re lucky enough to draw one of these tiles, it will give you more points. The Japanese game, called riichi, is usually played with 136 tiles.

Sabrina Tan, founder of Mahjong Lah in Singapore, learned the game while watching her relatives play. Now she sells lessons to American, British and Australian tourists via Airbnb, following a surge of interest in mahjong after it was featured in the Singapore-set 2018 movie Crazy Rich Asians, in which the lead character gives away the winning hand in a game. Since 2022, it has become the former educator’s full-time job.

Tan introduces tourists to the intricacies of the game as well as the superstitions that surround it. “If I pat your shoulder, I’m giving you bad luck, so don’t let anyone pat your shoulder,” says Tan. “During the West round, you cannot get up from the table, even if it’s to use the bathroom, because it’s seen as unlucky.”

Tan says that players will say mahjong is based more on luck than skill, but she likes to be more philosophical about it. “It’s the same as with life. You’re dealt certain hands, but the skill part is what you want to do about it,” she explains.

While the bamboo and bone tiles may be long gone, and the mahjong table is now inlaid with phone charging sockets rather than mother of pearl, the game’s magic remains the same.

“Part of why it has been so enduring, so endlessly revisited, and why I think we’re having this renaissance today is because of the way it can help people connect and build community,” says Heinz.

Claire Turrell | READ MORE

Claire Turrell is an award-winning freelance journalist based in Singapore. Her work has been published by Insider, National Geographic, The Guardian and BBC.