The Origins of Mahjong

Mahjong has traveled a long way to reach your table. Long before it was a girls’ night in, long before the clatter of tiles became the soundtrack of a good evening, it began where so many beautiful things do, in China.

A 19th century beginning

Mahjong took shape in China in the mid to late 1800s, likely growing out of earlier Chinese card and domino games. Played with engraved tiles instead of cards, it spread quickly through teahouses and parlors, prized for its blend of luck, skill, and sociability. By the early 20th century it was a national pastime.

The 1920s craze

In 1920 an American businessman living in China, Joseph Babcock, simplified the rules and published them for a Western audience. Sets began arriving by the crate, sold in shops as grand as Abercrombie & Fitch, and by 1923 Mahjong was a genuine craze. Americans played it at parties, in clubs, and around kitchen tables, and along the way they began shaping the game to suit themselves.

A game of our own

American Mahjong added its own signatures: the Jokers, the tile swap known as the Charleston, and, most importantly, the idea of winning with specific hands rather than any four sets and a pair. In 1937 the National Mah Jongg League was founded and began publishing an official card of valid hands, refreshed every year. That card is the version most Americans grew up watching at the kitchen table.

A glamorous resurgence

Mahjong is enjoying a bright new chapter. A younger generation has discovered it, won over by its style, its strategy, and above all the way it brings people together around a table. Clubs and lessons are filling up, and the tiles are turning up everywhere from Sunday afternoons to Instagram.

At Girls Gone Mahjong, we’re carrying that tradition forward in our own way, keeping everything that makes the game timeless and dressing it up for how we gather now.