I’ve been trying to start a mah-jong club with friends for the longest time, and it finally happened last night! I present to you: highlights from the first official installment of “Tea and Tiles” ;) The premise is simple: gather with friends, sip some tea, and play rounds of mah-jong.
In case you’re not familiar with mah-jong, it’s an ancient Chinese game invented in the 1850s. Very similar to Rummy, but played with tiles instead of playing cards. The game is composed of 144 tiles, broken into suits. The objective: get your tiles into a combination of four ‘three-of-a-kinds’ or ’sequences’, along with a pair (or two-of-a-kind). It’s kind of hard to explain the rules, but easy to learn if you’re watching people play or have a set physically in front of you. Here are the different suits:
Coppers (or Dots)
Bamboos
Ten-Thousands
Like poker and other card games that involve matching items into optimal groupings, winning a mah-jong round requires luck and a whole lot of strategy. Since last night was the first gathering, we focused on getting the rules right (and figuring out mystery tiles). I bought the tile set in Shanghai and was unfamiliar with some of the pieces since mah-jong sets sometimes vary from region to region. For example, instead of 8 Flower tiles, the set breaks it down into 4 Seasons Tiles and 4 other tiles we called “Wack Tiles”.
The ‘wack tiles’ are on the bottom row, consisting of a rat, a cat, a picture that resembled an upside down radish and a picture that looked like a man with a tomato body. Don’t ask why/what, because we had no idea either.
Close up of Tomato-man and Radish.
Anyway, there is sure to be more Tea and Tiles meets to come, so I’ll update on the progress of this event soon. Anyone down to learn the rules and partake in some mah-jong madness?!
Filed under: Adventures | Tagged: fun events
So the four seasons and wack tiles are the 8 Flower tiles.
When acquiring 4 of a kind, you do just get to keep the extra tile without having to discard. Although it counts for more points, 4 of a kind acts like a triplet. :-)
More mah-jong news as I receive confirmation.
I’m down for some tea and tile madness-sounds interesting
Thanks for “rules update” ms.cactus :)
And Matt you are ON for the next sesh of Tea and Tiles!
i want to play! damn my distance.
Next time we play, I plan on opening up multiple “Flower shops”. Hooray for my deft green thumb! I’m craving some more T-N-Tiles!
[...] Shrink the Media. created an interesting post today (Tea and Tiles.).Read a snippet here, but follow the link for the whole thing.The ‘wack tiles’ are on the bottom row, consisting of a rat, a cat, a picture that resembled an upside down radish and a picture that looked like a man w ith a tomato body…. [...]
woh bu juh dao. xie xie ni.
[...] regales us with stories of her new mah-jong [...]