The History and Basic Rules of Mahjong – A Tile Game That Spread from Late-Qing China to the World

Mahjong (麻雀) is a game in which four players sit around a table, draw and discard tiles engraved with pictures and numbers, and race to complete a set combination first. Its basic structure resembles the card game rummy, but there are many kinds of tiles and scoring varies so much by region that countless variants exist under the same name.

In this post, we first look at how mahjong emerged in 19th-century Qing China and how it spread to the United States and Japan in the early 20th century. We then cover the composition of the tiles, the most basic winning hand, and the differences between regional rules in China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States. Finally, we look at how mahjong lives on in computer and online games.

The rules are explained only to the level needed to understand the overall structure. Details such as full scoring tables, which differ by region and rulebook, are not covered in depth.

At a Glance

Item	Details
Origin	19th-century Qing China (there are several theories about the exact time and place)
Players	Usually 4 (three-player variants also exist)
Tiles	136 in the basic set, 144 with flower tiles (American sets add jokers)
Basic winning hand	4 melds + 1 pair = 14 tiles
Main variants	Chinese Official, Japanese riichi, Hong Kong, Taiwanese (16 tiles), American

Name and Origins

The name comes from the Chinese characters 麻雀, which originally mean "sparrow." A common story says the clatter of tiles being shuffled sounds like chirping sparrows, but this is just one of several explanations for the name. When the Cantonese pronunciation reached English speakers, spellings such as "Mahjong" and "Mah-Jongg" appeared.

It is not clear exactly when or where mahjong was first created. Old legends credit Confucius with its invention, but these are considered unfounded. Historians generally agree that a form close to today's game took shape in the latter half of the 19th century during the Qing dynasty, and many believe it developed from earlier paper card games. Indeed, mahjong's three numbered suits resemble the money-based suits of old Chinese playing cards.

There are also several theories about its birthplace. An early mahjong guidebook published in 1914 states that the game was born in Ningbo, Zhejiang, about thirty years earlier, while other accounts say it was first played among fishermen in Fujian or Guangdong. Since there is not enough evidence to settle the question, it is safest to say that it spread mainly around the lower Yangtze region and China's southern coast.

How It Spread Around the World

The United States: A 1920s Craze

The United States was where mahjong first became widely known outside China. Joseph Park Babcock, an American working for Standard Oil, was sent to Suzhou, China, in 1912. He enjoyed playing mahjong there and organized the rules so Westerners could learn them easily. His rulebook, first published in 1920, is known as "The Red Book of Rules."

Babcock trademarked the name "Mah-Jongg" and imported large numbers of mahjong sets to the U.S., and the game became a major craze in America in the early 1920s. In 1924, a standardization committee that included Babcock was formed to organize standard rules for American players. Even after the craze faded, mahjong continued in the U.S. with its own rules. In 1937, the National Mah Jongg League was founded in New York, and American mahjong, based on the "card" the league publishes every year, became established.

Japan: Arrival in the Early 20th Century

The earliest record of actual mahjong tiles arriving in Japan dates to the end of the Meiji era. Nagawa Hikosaku is credited with bringing a set back from China, though sources give the year as either 1909 or 1910. In 1920, a mahjong club called Jakusenkai was established in Akasaka, Tokyo, and mahjong clubs and organizations grew in number through the 1920s.

However, rules from various parts of China and Western rules had all arrived in Japan at the same time, making it difficult to create a single standard. Japan later added distinctive elements such as riichi and dora, giving rise to today's riichi mahjong. Even now there is no single unified official ruleset, and each organization and tournament uses slightly different rules.

The Tiles

Mahjong tiles are broadly divided into suited (number) tiles, honor tiles, and, in some rules, flower tiles.

Suited Tiles: Dots, Bamboo, and Characters

There are three suits, each numbered 1 to 9.

Dots (筒子): Tiles with round coin shapes. The number of circles shows the value.
Bamboo (索子): Tiles with bamboo stick shapes. The 1 of bamboo often shows a bird instead of a stick.
Characters (萬子): Tiles with a Chinese numeral above the character 萬.

There are four copies of each tile, so the suited tiles total 3 suits × 9 × 4 = 108.

Honor Tiles: Winds and Dragons

Honor tiles have no numbers and cannot be arranged in sequences.

Winds: East, South, West, and North, four of each for 16 tiles.
Dragons: White (白), Green (發), and Red (中), four of each for 12 tiles.

Adding the 108 suited tiles and 28 honor tiles gives 136, the most widely used basic set, including in Japanese riichi mahjong.

Flower Tiles

In southern China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, players often add eight flower tiles, the four flowers (plum, orchid, chrysanthemum, bamboo) and the four seasons, for a total of 144. A flower tile is not kept in hand; it is placed face up as soon as it is drawn, a replacement tile is drawn, and it mainly adds to the score. American mahjong uses even more tiles by adding jokers.

The Basic Winning Hand

The goal of mahjong is to be the first to complete a set pattern with your tiles. This is called a win ("hu" in Chinese, "agari" in Japanese).

Melds and the Pair

A normal hand has 13 tiles. On your turn you draw one tile and then discard one. When your 14 tiles form the following pattern, using a drawn tile or another player's discard, you win.

4 melds: groups of three tiles.
Chow (sequence): three consecutive numbers in the same suit (e.g., 3-4-5 of characters)
Pung (triplet): three identical tiles (e.g., East-East-East)
Kong (quad): four identical tiles. It counts as one meld, and when declared you draw an extra replacement tile.
1 pair: two identical tiles, called the "eyes" or "head."

So "four melds plus one pair" is the most basic winning form. Because honor tiles have no order, they cannot form chows and can only be used as pungs or pairs.

Pung, Chow, and Kong Calls

You can also complete a meld by claiming a tile another player has discarded. Taking a discarded tile to match a pair you hold is called "pung" (碰), and using the discard of the player just before you to form a sequence is called "chow" (吃). Melds made this way must be laid face up, which reveals information about your hand.

Special Hands

Some special winning hands do not follow the basic pattern. Well-known examples include "seven pairs," made of seven different pairs, and "thirteen orphans," made of one each of the thirteen terminal and honor tiles plus one duplicate. Which special hands are allowed depends on the ruleset.

Regional Variants

Mahjong rules vary greatly by region. Even with the same tiles, what counts for points and how many points are needed to win differ so much that the variants can feel like different games.

Chinese Official Mahjong

In 1998, Chinese sports authorities published a new standard ruleset to separate mahjong from gambling and treat it as a competitive game. These rules are commonly called Chinese Official rules (MCR, or 国标麻将). They define 81 scoring patterns, and a key feature is that a hand needs at least 8 points to win. These rules are also used in international tournaments.

Japanese Riichi Mahjong

This is the most widely played ruleset in Japan. It uses 136 tiles and has the following features.

Riichi: When your hand is one tile away from completion (tenpai), you can place a point stick and declare riichi. After declaring, you cannot change your hand.
Yaku: To win, your hand must contain at least one yaku (a defined scoring condition).
Dora: Bonus tiles that raise your score when you hold them. Many rules also use red fives as bonus tiles (akadora).
Furiten: A rule that prevents you from winning on another player's discard if you have already discarded one of your winning tiles.

Japan has several professional mahjong organizations, and since 2018 the M.League has been running, with professionals from multiple organizations competing as teams.

Hong Kong and Taiwanese Mahjong

Hong Kong (Cantonese) mahjong mostly uses 144 tiles including flowers and calculates scores in units called "faan" (番). Its rule framework is relatively simple, and it is widely played across the Chinese-speaking world.

The biggest difference in Taiwanese mahjong is that hands have 16 tiles. Since players start with 16 instead of 13 tiles, a winning hand has 17 tiles: five melds and one pair. Some rules also count collecting all eight flower tiles as an automatic win.

American Mahjong

American mahjong is structured quite differently from other variants. It uses joker tiles and has a procedure called "the Charleston," in which players pass tiles to one another in a set order before play begins. Above all, the winning hands are defined by the combinations printed on a card that the National Mah Jongg League issues each year. As a result, the target hands in American mahjong change from year to year.

Computer and Online Mahjong

The most widely known computer game using mahjong tiles is actually not four-player mahjong but a single-player matching game. In this game, you remove pairs of identical tiles from a stacked layout. Brodie Lockard first created it in 1981 on the PLATO system, and it spread widely after Activision released it for PCs as "Shanghai" in 1986. It is often called "mahjong solitaire," but its rules have nothing to do with the original game.

Four-player mahjong was also adapted into video games early on. In Japan especially, mahjong games have been released steadily for arcades, home consoles, and PCs, and after the internet became widespread, services for playing against others online appeared. The Japanese online mahjong service Tenhou launched in 2006 under the name Hanjukusou and took its current name in 2007. Mahjong Soul, which first launched in China in 2018, became widely known in Japan after its Japanese version arrived in 2019.

Mahjong is also of interest in artificial intelligence research. Unlike Go or chess, players cannot see others' hands and the luck of the draw plays a large role, which makes it well suited to studying decision-making with imperfect information. In 2020, researchers at Microsoft Research Asia released a paper on Suphx, an AI that plays riichi mahjong using deep reinforcement learning.

Summary

Mahjong took shape in 19th-century Qing China in a form connected to paper card games, then traveled to the United States and Japan in the early 20th century, where it developed its own rules in each place. The 136-tile (or 144-tile) set and the basic form of four melds and one pair remain common to most variants, but scoring methods and detailed rules differ greatly by region.

If you are just starting out, it is best to choose one ruleset and learn the tiles and the basic winning hand first. Once you understand the basic structure, it becomes easy to compare what is the same and what is different in other regional variants.