A game that bridges continents and generations.
My mother never wanted me to learn how to play mahjong, fearing it might foster a propensity for gambling. When I was young, though, her sister would visit from London, giving her a sufficient number of players for the game. As dusk settled, I was lured from my bedroom to the table by the shuffling of ivory tiles and clattering of chips after someone yelled, “Kong!” My aunt, as aunts do, made me her proxy, giving me her seat and perching behind me as I played. Her sister acquiesced. hardwood floor tile
In time, my mother taught me the rudiments: a trio of suits, with tiles numbered one through nine, four of each; a quartet of capricious winds (east, south, west, north), four of each; and the triumvirate of so-called dragons — you guessed it, four of each. The object of the game, reminiscent of gin rummy, involves drawing tiles or taking discards to form sets: chi, a sequence of three tiles from one suit; pong, a trio of identical tiles; and kong, an elevated pong, all four of any tile. A winning hand, with a couple of exceptions, comprises four sets and a pair.
My mother will tell you that she’s not a gambler, but that’s a wily hedge. She zealously plays the stock market, the lottery and mahjong — a game in which payout grows not just incrementally but exponentially. She loves to tell the story of how she and her friends back in Kuala Lumpur would play for so long that one of them was wont to turn his underwear inside out so he wouldn’t have to stop. When my mother immigrated to Canada in the 1980s, a couple of heirloom mahjong sets were chief among the possessions she brought from Malaysia.
As a first-generation kid, I navigated the ragged contours of identity by trying to renounce my ethnicity. I was loath to bring pork-floss sandwiches to school, even though I thought they were superior to Lunchables. During the dawn of dial-up internet, I would clandestinely “ask Jeeves” about double-eyelid surgery (as if I could clandestinely undergo such a procedure). I still can’t really speak Cantonese (in my defense, neither can my father; in his defense, his native tongue is Hokkein). Before I departed for college, however, I had taken a real shine to the game of mahjong.
When I, my parents’ only son, left Vancouver for Toronto, my mother suspected I’d never move back. She’s right, but what Chinese mother isn’t? Her infallibility is at the root of most of our rifts, the most egregious of which stem from squabbles over money. In our family, her misconstruals become the truth; I’m the only one who puts up resistance.
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