Hi Lara, interesting to read about your journey in Mahjong Edit.
May I offer a few things to consider. I know that American mahjong is quite different to the traditional mahjong I grew up playing - Hakka Rules or Country Rules as it’s known and also Kowloon Rules. I wonder if you have ever looked at the philosophy behind the different rules. Mahjong in America is very much a social game with the organisation behind it making it a game enjoyed by both beginners and experts beause the National Mah Jongg League, being the arbiter of American mahjong rules, publishes a new card of winning hands each year. That annual card is the philosophical key. Players must purchase the new card to know what constitutes a valid win.
Unlike traditional mahjong, the winning hands are not derived from tradition or skill development over generations. An experienced player of thirty years has no inherent advantage over a newcomer if both have memorised this year's card equally well. You know what everyone could be building because the valid hands are public and finite. This shifts the balance toward tile distribution, which is closer to luck than the Chinese variants where the range of possible hands creates genuine information asymmetry. This results in more luck than intution meaning there is less reading of opponents, less inference about what they're building and more focus on the conversation around the table than the tiles on it.
Hakka Rules derives from accumulated tradition, transmitted through practice rather than published annually by any authority. Mastery is real and takes years as I found out - more than 30 in total. The wall cutoff (nine stacks or 18 tiles remain, imposing discipline that no external body decreed is structural, is built into the game's architecture. And the philosophy underneath it, patience, restraint and reading what you have rather than chasing what you want is inseparable from the cultural conditions that produced it.
Kowloon Rules depend on nerve and adaptability , you play against the other players, and you win by reading them better than they read you. The 12 point maximum and one player payout encourages suite or honours building whereas Hakka Rules (which I grew up playing as I am Hakka) with it’s 5 point maximum and chicken hands encourages endurance and restraint as you play against the tiles and against time. With American Mahjong you play against the card, and you win by having memorised the current year's permissible outcomes better than the person across the table. you win by surviving longer than the wall.
I am now finishing my novel: Losing Less: Hakka Rules which is about how and what 4 hands of mahjong reveal about life and reflects what people say and do. The novel is set in multiple countries where the Chinese diaspora expanded but ultimately revolves around Hong Kong land issues and that of my 550 year old clan. Thanks for reading.
What a thoughtful note, thank you for taking the time. Thirty years inside Hakka Rules is its own kind of mastery, and I love that you're putting it into a novel. I'll be first in line to read it.
I want to give credit where it's due first: the American game grew out of the Chinese one, and I never lose sight of that. The roots run deep, and the traditions you grew up with are the reason any of us are sitting at a table at all. Learning the variations firsthand is genuinely on my list. Hakka, Kowloon, the older Chinese forms. I want to feel how differently they play, not just read about them, because I think it would make me a better teacher of the version I know.
Where I'd gently push back is on the idea that the published card leaves less room for reading the table. The card tells you the universe of hands, but it doesn't tell you which one the woman across from you is actually building, when she's switched, what she's holding back, or which tile is safe to let go three turns from now. That last part, "winning by surviving the wall," is defense, and defense in the American game is almost entirely reading your opponents. The Charleston alone is a whole conversation about information before a single tile is discarded.
So I'd say the skill didn't disappear, it moved. In the Chinese variants it lives in the breadth of possible hands. In the American game it lives in discards, timing, and restraint with a known board. Different architecture, same patience and inference you described so well. After teaching hundreds of women, I promise you the thirty-year player still has the edge over the newcomer, even when they've both memorized the card.
Thank you again for reading and for sharing where you come from. Best of luck finishing Losing Less. Hong Kong land and a 550-year-old clan, that's a book I want to sit with.
Thank you Lara. I've been putting up small extracts and relevant articles in my Substack. The 4 hands I describe all actually happened over the course of my life, I'm now 67 and I recorded them because of what I learnt from and only about 10 years ago did I actually start on my novel. I laid it down for about 6 years until a trip I had to make back to HK for the 2019 Daijiao (a 10 year reunion of alliance villages) in my role of clan trustee that I've managed to get back into it. Not being able to read and write Chinese made it difficult to do research but by talking and listening to relatives and clan elders I've been able to piece together enough to finish.
Hi Lara, interesting to read about your journey in Mahjong Edit.
May I offer a few things to consider. I know that American mahjong is quite different to the traditional mahjong I grew up playing - Hakka Rules or Country Rules as it’s known and also Kowloon Rules. I wonder if you have ever looked at the philosophy behind the different rules. Mahjong in America is very much a social game with the organisation behind it making it a game enjoyed by both beginners and experts beause the National Mah Jongg League, being the arbiter of American mahjong rules, publishes a new card of winning hands each year. That annual card is the philosophical key. Players must purchase the new card to know what constitutes a valid win.
Unlike traditional mahjong, the winning hands are not derived from tradition or skill development over generations. An experienced player of thirty years has no inherent advantage over a newcomer if both have memorised this year's card equally well. You know what everyone could be building because the valid hands are public and finite. This shifts the balance toward tile distribution, which is closer to luck than the Chinese variants where the range of possible hands creates genuine information asymmetry. This results in more luck than intution meaning there is less reading of opponents, less inference about what they're building and more focus on the conversation around the table than the tiles on it.
Hakka Rules derives from accumulated tradition, transmitted through practice rather than published annually by any authority. Mastery is real and takes years as I found out - more than 30 in total. The wall cutoff (nine stacks or 18 tiles remain, imposing discipline that no external body decreed is structural, is built into the game's architecture. And the philosophy underneath it, patience, restraint and reading what you have rather than chasing what you want is inseparable from the cultural conditions that produced it.
Kowloon Rules depend on nerve and adaptability , you play against the other players, and you win by reading them better than they read you. The 12 point maximum and one player payout encourages suite or honours building whereas Hakka Rules (which I grew up playing as I am Hakka) with it’s 5 point maximum and chicken hands encourages endurance and restraint as you play against the tiles and against time. With American Mahjong you play against the card, and you win by having memorised the current year's permissible outcomes better than the person across the table. you win by surviving longer than the wall.
I am now finishing my novel: Losing Less: Hakka Rules which is about how and what 4 hands of mahjong reveal about life and reflects what people say and do. The novel is set in multiple countries where the Chinese diaspora expanded but ultimately revolves around Hong Kong land issues and that of my 550 year old clan. Thanks for reading.
What a thoughtful note, thank you for taking the time. Thirty years inside Hakka Rules is its own kind of mastery, and I love that you're putting it into a novel. I'll be first in line to read it.
I want to give credit where it's due first: the American game grew out of the Chinese one, and I never lose sight of that. The roots run deep, and the traditions you grew up with are the reason any of us are sitting at a table at all. Learning the variations firsthand is genuinely on my list. Hakka, Kowloon, the older Chinese forms. I want to feel how differently they play, not just read about them, because I think it would make me a better teacher of the version I know.
Where I'd gently push back is on the idea that the published card leaves less room for reading the table. The card tells you the universe of hands, but it doesn't tell you which one the woman across from you is actually building, when she's switched, what she's holding back, or which tile is safe to let go three turns from now. That last part, "winning by surviving the wall," is defense, and defense in the American game is almost entirely reading your opponents. The Charleston alone is a whole conversation about information before a single tile is discarded.
So I'd say the skill didn't disappear, it moved. In the Chinese variants it lives in the breadth of possible hands. In the American game it lives in discards, timing, and restraint with a known board. Different architecture, same patience and inference you described so well. After teaching hundreds of women, I promise you the thirty-year player still has the edge over the newcomer, even when they've both memorized the card.
Thank you again for reading and for sharing where you come from. Best of luck finishing Losing Less. Hong Kong land and a 550-year-old clan, that's a book I want to sit with.
Lara
Thank you Lara. I've been putting up small extracts and relevant articles in my Substack. The 4 hands I describe all actually happened over the course of my life, I'm now 67 and I recorded them because of what I learnt from and only about 10 years ago did I actually start on my novel. I laid it down for about 6 years until a trip I had to make back to HK for the 2019 Daijiao (a 10 year reunion of alliance villages) in my role of clan trustee that I've managed to get back into it. Not being able to read and write Chinese made it difficult to do research but by talking and listening to relatives and clan elders I've been able to piece together enough to finish.