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Being Chinese
The art of winning at and beyond the mahjong table
I was a hit with my mahjong buddies because I didn’t play like a typical Chinese person. The years since have taught me better
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Foong Woei Wan is a production editor at the Post.
My friend is a millionaire by way of owning a home in Hong Kong, the world’s least affordable housing market, but you wouldn’t guess from how personally she takes it when the winds of fortune aren’t blowing her way at the mahjong table.
“What now? What on earth do you want from me? This is crazy,” she growls while wrestling 13 tiles into some kind of order, burrowing through her hair for an answer, agonising over which tile is the least risky to discard.
Somehow it often falls to me, the poor church mouse at this table, to remind her we’re playing for rather low stakes, having capped every win or loss at HK$40 (US$5.10). But she always retorts, “It’s no fun if you don’t take it seriously.”
Mahjong has been all the rage internationally, after Crazy Rich Asians made it cool for a new generation. Personally, I preferred the vicarious thrill of seeing such mahjong-related films to playing the Chinese game itself, which dates back to at least the Qing dynasty and seems to revolve around “waiting so long that one’s neck stretches longer”, as we say in Cantonese: waiting for things to fall into place as four of you draw tiles in rotation, wishing another player would unsuspectingly toss out a tile you need to build a high-scoring hand, waiting to luck out and draw the winning 14th tile yourself.
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