LA can't get enough of mahjong. Over 40 styles of play can keep you hooked

Дата публикации: 05-08-2026 08:38:24

In West Hollywood, mahjong lovers click tiles with Cindy Crawford at the San Vicente Bungalows.
“She wins almost every game,” said Heidi Brooks, co-founder of Mahj to Go, the company that supplies the branded tiles used at the Bungalows’ exclusive open play and tournaments.
The secret to the supermodel’s mahjong success? Pattern recognition, Crawford said. It’s a skill her mother-in-law taught her, she added, and one essential in mahjong, where players must quickly identify tile combinations and anticipate what others are building. 
Crawford had never heard of mahjong growing up in Illinois, and it wasn’t until she met Brooks that she really “got into it,” she said. Since then, whenever she has the chance to play, she usually says yes — except the day she called me from Canada, when she had to decline an invitation to play mahjong because she was, ironically, talking to me about mahjong.
Mahj to Go co-founder Heidi Brooks, far right, poses with her group of four, including Cindy Crawford, second from left, at the mahjong table in LA. Photo courtesy of Mahj to Go.
Crawford isn’t the only one swearing by the cult of the tile. From Chinatown basements to living rooms, offices to bars, mahjong is everywhere in Los Angeles. A-listers like Julia Roberts, Meghan Markle, and Blake Lively have all been seen slapping tiles around town. And a “Mahjong Megachurch,” complete with 10 automatic shuffling tables and an invite-only guest list, has become the newest form of social currency for the city’s young and well-connected.
While it never disappeared, the centuries-old game has far outgrown its reputation as a grandmother’s pastime. When Mahj to Go started, the founders mainly taught older women. Now, the game’s infiltrated sororities and is trending on social media, said Lynne Spillman, Brooks’s business partner.
Mahjong’s explosion in popularity appears to be linked to a post-pandemic desire for connection. Players say they crave sensory, analog experiences in an age of digitization and AI. For others, the allure is in the beauty of the tiles themselves — the most coveted sets can easily fetch up to $600.
Crawford loves mahjong because it’s “a great excuse for women to get together,” she said, and an even better mental exercise. On the road, she keeps practicing using the Real Mahjong app, which can only be accessed by players with an official National Mah Jongg League card.
In L.A., Hong Kong, American and Taiwanese mahjong dominate as the most popular styles of play. For those who aren’t familiar with the rules, mahjong is loosely a tile-based cousin of gin rummy. Most Asian styles let players assemble winning hands freely. Taiwanese style uses an extra tile and more complex scoring than the more widely known Hong Kong style. Meanwhile, American mahjong relies on a standardized card of preset hands and eight additional joker “wild cards.”
But when someone says “mahjong,” they could be referring to any one of over 40 distinct variations, each with its own rules and traditions, all demanding some combination of strategy, skill and luck. 
Mahjong’s evolution means some players gather around vintage sets passed down through generations. Some play for cash. Others compete in tournaments where mahjong is treated as a sport. Along the way, the game has also become the center of cultural debates over appropriation vs. appreciation.
How did mahjong come to the U.S.? 
Mahjong emerged in 1800s China near Shanghai, where it was mainly a male gambling game. Its path to America is largely credited to Joseph Park Babcock, a Standard Oil representative who returned home from China in the 1920s and helped market the game to an American audience. 
Aided by Hollywood stars, similar to influencers today, the game fueled a nationwide craze. Soon, President Warren G. Harding and first lady Florence Harding were playing in the White House. So were wealthy families like the Vanderbilts. Glossy magazines featured players gathered around ornate sets, while department stores filled display windows with mahjong tiles. At the height of the Roaring Twenties, mahjong was a marker of cosmopolitan taste.
Nancy Hsu and Sam Wang join players at a purple mahjong table. Photo courtesy of L.A. Mahjong League.
Nearly a century later, young Asian American entrepreneurs in L.A. are using mahjong as an opportunity to reconnect with their culture. 
Nancy Hsu and Sam Wang, co-founders of the L.A. Mahjong League, play 16-tile Taiwanese mahjong at different venues across the city.
The league offers in-depth lessons and games — classes run at least 50 minutes — and a chance to share their culture with “love and authenticity,” Wang said. 
A decade ago, Wang could hardly imagine someone who wasn’t Taiwanese asking to learn Taiwanese mahjong. Today, the game has a wider audience, he said. 
For some players, growing up Asian American meant that cultural self-consciousness and a desire to assimilate often kept the game at home. Now, it’s a source of pride, said league member Deborah Duan.
An instructor walks a beginner group through the basics of mahjong. Photo courtesy of Sarah Teng, Green Tile Social Club.
Mahjong also has a way of transcending time and space, Hsu added. Years ago, her aunt won a flush full hand — a rare, high-scoring hand made entirely of one suit. It’s a moment her family still brings up to this day. Every so often, Hsu sees the same play unfold at the league, and the memory will return to her as vividly as the moment she first lived it.
“When I look out and see that level of play, it’s like being at home with my family,” she said. Her eyes immediately filled with tears.
Jewish American women forged American mahjong culture
By the 1930s, a new mahjong tradition was taking shape in the United States.
American mahjong, formalized by the National Mah Jongg League in 1937, revolves around an annually updated card of preset winning hands. This version of the game has developed its own rituals and vocabulary, from tile racks and coin purses to table snacks and a distinctive shorthand.
American mahjong culture was shaped by Jewish women in the New York area during and after World War II. The game spread through predominantly Jewish social networks that had formed due to antisemitic exclusion. As Jewish families moved to the suburbs after the war, mahjong moved with them, becoming a fixture of suburban life and a lifeline for many young mothers adjusting to new communities. 
At the J, players build tile walls to kick off the game. Photo courtesy of the Jewish Community Center of Dallas.
The current revival has been fueled in part by those same networks, making mahjong more diverse than ever, historian Annelise Heinz said. Heinz began researching the game and its “virtually forgotten historical record” in grad school, after a question she always had growing up — “Why do the mothers of my Jewish friends all play a Chinese game?” — yielded mostly theories and misinformation online, she said. She has since authored a book narrating the history of the game, “Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture.”
Heinz said that many baby boomers are now passing down mahjong, while their daughters, who often grew up around the game without learning it, are returning to it later in life and teaching friends, spouses and neighbors how to play. 
Karli Ward, the special event and hospitality director at the Aaron Family Jewish Community Center of Dallas, is one of them. Learning mahjong was a lifelong goal, she said, but she didn’t seriously pursue the game until she met her husband in 2020. 
The woman who would become her mother-in-law was a mahjong instructor who taught many members of the Jewish community how to play. When Ward asked to learn, her husband’s mom told her to bring a group of four people; she wouldn’t teach her one-on-one.
A group of four women study their cards and deliberate their next moves at the J. Photo courtesy of the Jewish Community Center of Dallas.
After learning the game, Ward brought lessons to the Jewish Community Center, known as the J. Today, the center hosts classes, a league and tournaments where players of all ages compete against one another. Recently, a 10-year-old player faced off against a senior.
“It’s a joke that everyone in the Jewish community plays mahjong,” Ward said. The game is one of the traditions passed down over generations.
For Jake Wertheim, the J’s digital marketing manager, that tradition looked like weekly mahjong nights hosted by his mother when he was a kid.
“It was my mom and fellow Jewish ladies, for the most part,” he said. “My mom would set up tables. She’d come home from work early, put the tables in the living room, move the couches out, have everything ready and set out bowls of peanut M&Ms and other snacks. She’d tell me not to eat them because they were for her mahjong.” Peanut M&Ms still make an appearance in the J’s mahjong room today.
Mahjong, he added, is about more than the game itself. People come for the snacks, the company, the drinks —and the chance to dress the part. At tournaments, players show up wearing mahjong shirts, hats, earrings and necklaces. As Wertheim put it, “You’re all in.”
Learning mahjong for the first time
I didn’t grow up playing mahjong, even though both of my parents are from China. And because I don’t have a mother-in-law to teach me, I turned to the next best option: New York’s Chinatown. 
At the Phoenix Palace on Bowery, young men and women sipped drinks at the bar, ate popcorn chicken catered from Potluck Club, one of the city’s hottest Cantonese-American restaurants, and kindly annihilated me at the mahjong table. 
A Green Tile staffer explains the different suits to a group of players. Photo courtesy of Sarah Teng, Green Tile Social Club.
That was partly my fault — I hadn’t gone on a beginner night — but I did manage to get a Hong-Kong style rundown from Chris Kumaradjaja, a staffer at the Green Tile Social Club. As he explained the different suits, I asked him why he started playing. 
The social aspect of the game was a big motivator. “It’s a bit of a catalyst for conversation,” he said. Basically, he clarified, a round could mean the start of a new friendship, or a silent, focused battle between “life or death.” 
I really liked the sound of the former, and not so much the latter. Most beginners start off with “chicken hands,” or mahjong in easy mode. After an hour, you can graduate to scoring hands. 
A group of advanced mahjong players. Photo courtesy of Sarah Teng, Green Tile Social Club.
But I soon found out that I wouldn’t have the luxury of puttering around the kiddie pool. As I took my seat among seasoned Gen Z and millennial players and constructed my tile wall — my puny line of defense against the sharks — an atmosphere of concentration settled over the booth. Players crossed their arms and leaned back to read the table, scan discards and update their strategy. 
For experienced players, tile counting and decision making goes by fast, albeit with great deliberation. I slowed them down by grabbing the wrong tile here and there, mistakes my table graciously corrected. Fingers tapped rapidly against felt mats. Around us, exclamations over a rare hand, accompanied by the rhythmic cascading of tiles, created a comforting chatter in the background. The noise made by the shuffling tiles is similar to a flock of sparrows, the bird after which the game was named. 
Players gather for a Lunar New Year event including a DJ set, food and dragon dance. Photo courtesy of Sarah Teng, Green Tile Social Club.
To nobody’s surprise, I didn’t win any of the four sets, each taking around 15 minutes. But by the third round, I felt something click. I was getting better —  I’d managed to form four sets of three — but was beaten by the young woman to my left, who managed to snag a pair and call mahjong. 
Many players told me the game is an addiction. I didn’t believe it, until I went home and started practicing online. I won my first game against bots, then a second, then a third. I was in love.
For the rest of the week, I kept practicing. I even booked a ticket to play in another mahjong league for the following week. This time, I made sure my opponents were beginners.
Mahjong’s high-glamour rebranding in the South
Mahjong is a particularly adaptable game. “The tiles themselves are a canvas,” historian Annelise Heinz said, and they allow for endless variations in imagery and symbolism, often related to local identity.
That flexibility has sparked cultural controversy, particularly in the South. 
In Texas, a hub of the mahjong boom, companies founded by entrepreneurs who are neither Jewish nor Asian American sell tiles with designs that stray from the game’s traditional iconography. One Dallas-based company, The Mahjong Line, aligns the tile suits with the theme of each set. In the $485 Ranch Line, for example, tiles with Chinese characters become horseshoes, bamboo become cacti and circles become sunsets. 
American mahjong players line up a row of Mahjong Line tiles along glasses of wine. Photo courtesy of The Mahjong Line.
The glitzy sets often cater to a distinctly Southern aesthetic of hosting and femininity, Heinz said. Game runners coordinate their sets, tabletop décor and even the cocktails they serve, adding an aesthetic, material element to the game. 
The breakthrough came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when three players in Highland Park, Texas, decided to redesign mahjong’s classic white tiles with Pantone colors and custom artwork. The Mahjong Line is part of a group of businesses founded in Dallas over the last six years that have become many of the country’s leading mahjong companies. 
Brands like My Fair Mahjong, Oh My Mahjong, and Bespoke Mahjong all sell tile pushers, floating game mats, and a wide array of tile sets. There are mahjong-themed hats, cups, and carrying cases, as well as mahjong mats and racks in teal, hot pink or cheetah print. 
Many of The Mahjong Line’s most popular themed sets are sold out online. That includes the Foodie Line, whose joker tiles feature playful illustrations of martinis and pizzas. Who is the foodie gal? The “consummate host and connector” whose “unofficial amuse-bouche is a game of trivia” and whose “post-dinner palate cleanser is karaoke,” according to the product description on the brand’s website.
The Mahjong Line’s “Foodie Line” features playful illustrations of burgers, martinis, chili peppers and asparagus in lieu of Chinese characters, bamboo and circles. Photo courtesy of The Mahjong Line.
The redesigned sets quickly fueled controversy. Critics were outraged when the brand coined the Pantone-colored tiles as a “respectful refresh” of traditional tiles — which, “while beautiful, were all the same,” the website once read. The original tiles contained “unnecessary” Chinese symbols, and the brand aimed to replace them with “minimal designs” for new players, according to the site’s FAQ section before it was taken down. 
The Mahjong Line founders have since apologized for their “failure to pay proper homage to the game’s Chinese heritage” and updated their website and social media to include educational content about mahjong’s origins.
Kate LaGere, the company’s co-founder, said she received death threats, two of which were so alarming that local law enforcement was involved. Her only concern at that point was her family and their safety, she added.
The use of the words “modern” and “refresh” when talking about the tile redesign was unintentionally “loaded,” LaGere told NBC. She comes from the advertising industry, where those kinds of words are used daily to say you are changing something established, she said, describing the experience as “a learning moment.”
The feedback from the Asian and Asian American community over the tiles was mixed, she added.
“I received countless emails from Asian Americans and Asians that expressed their support of our highlighting the game and growing the game,” she said. “Many thought it was great and were encouraging us to keep going.”
The comments LaGere received condemned the “misplaced anger and ugliness” directed toward her, she said. One player wrote to her, “I don’t take any offense; I love the product you have created,” while another said, “Please keep going; this will mean there will be more people to play with,” according to LaGere.
A vast array of the Mahjong Line’s colorful tiles. Photo courtesy of The Mahjong Line.
Today, the co-founder of The Mahjong Line emphasizes the importance of learning the history of the game in China. At the same time, there is a large market for the products that the company designs, she said. 
“We unabashedly use creativity and originality and color to a game that we love,” LaGere said. “We have grown this game and brought more women into the fold of American mahjong, and we’re super proud of that contribution.”
Heinz remains hopeful that mahjong can open broader conversations about racism and growing up Asian American in the United States. The game’s complex history continues to unfold at a moment of heightened attention toward China, she said, both as a geopolitical concern and a point of cultural objectification.
“Mahjong retains its really valuable place in American culture as a bridge across difference, and I think it can play that role,” Heinz added. 
Mahjong isn’t going anywhere
Players and league organizers believe the signs are clear: mahjong is here to stay.
Part of its lasting power is built into the game itself. Mahjong is played with four people, creating a recurring reason to gather. 
Mahjong’s recent surge in popularity has invited comparisons to pickleball. But mahjong’s cultural power extends beyond its current moment. It has long served as a way for newly formed or displaced communities to build community, Heinz said. During and after World War II, for example, the Air Force Officers’ Spouses Club developed its own variant, Wright-Patterson mahjong, which is still played by officer spouses on Air Force bases around the world.
One of mahjong’s greatest rewards is the unlikely groups of people it brings together, league organizers say. Every game needs four players, and strangers often become regulars. 
Some of Spillman’s closest friendships began that way, through a game that has brought the same group together for the past decade. They raised their kids together, watched them leave and then come back from college, she said. 
“We’ve been through it all, and all at the mahjong table,” Spillman said. 

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