The Los Angeles Mahjong Scene Is Getting Crazy

This past Saturday, I won the Los Angeles Mahjong League Tournament at Chifa out in Eagle Rock. It was totally unexpected, considering I've only been playing mahjong for about 4 months and I played against a few people who had regularly kicked my ass at other mahjong dens around town. Next month, I'll be competing at another LA mahjong tournament for a $1,000 prize.

Getting into the LA mahjong scene these past few months was incredibly fulfilling because I had been looking for some sort of game to get into my entire life. I'll play a game of chess every 2 years or so and have been doing so since I was in 2nd grade (1997), but I never had an interest in it except when I rewatch Searching for Bobby Fischer once a decade. Not falling in love with chess was disheartening because I always loved how Duchamp dedicated the latter half of his life to chess instead of art and how chess was the game of choice for mid-century cigarette-smoking beatniks, bohemians, and philosophers. Then, like most men, I tried to learn some sort of card game because of guys like James Bond and Wild Bill Hickok or the movie Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, but I was never able to grasp most concepts of any card game, let alone remember how to play it weeks or months later. I always thought everybody needs to get into some sort of social game. Chess, bridge, backgammon, go, mancala, something. It's another piece of human nature slowly dying at the hands of mobile and console gaming. Brad Phillips wrote two pieces about Scrabble, one for the Carhartt and one for the Paris Review, that made me feel like I was missing out on something by not having a game in my life.

After I took the leap into mahjong, I was instantly hooked. I thought I'd never be able to learn because the number of tiles was so intimidating and the speed of the players on the streets of Hong Kong seemed unattainable but nah, mahjong is the easiest game in the world. Keep in mind that I'm describing the popular Hong Kong version of mahjong, which can be seen in popular movies like the Joy Luck Club or Crazy Rich Asians: 13 tiles to start, 14 tiles to win. It's extremely similar to Taiwanese mahjong, which requires 16 tiles to start and 17 tiles to win. Mahjong Competition Rules (MCR-style) and riichi (Japanese-style featured in the video games Yakuza and Final Fantasy XIV) are similar, but they require some specific combinations and situations not found in the previous two. And all of these styles are completely different from American Mahjong or National Mah Jongg League (NMJL-style), which can be found being played in Jewish Community Centers across the country. If you're trying to learn or play mahjong, be sure to choose the correct style that you want to play; depending on where you live, some styles are easier to find than others.

Mahjong is easier than you think. You don't have to memorize every single multi-colored tile in the set. You just have to memorize what 4 suits kinda look like (dots, bamboos, numbers, winds/dragons) and how to count 3 consecutive numbers between 1 and 9 (1-2-3, 3-4-5,7-8-9, etc.). I'm not exaggerating. It's literally that easy. The hardest part is finding 3 other players to sit down at a table with you at the same time, but to my luck, there's been a nationwide Renaissance of mahjong in the past 3 years that's growing every day and Los Angeles is one of the hotspots. I go to at least one game per week. The most I'd ever been to in one week was 5 games. If I spoke Cantonese, there'd be at least 2 or 3 other weekly games I could be invited to, but that's another story.

• LA Times Today: Mahjong Mistress taps into nostalgia to throw L.A. parties
• VICE (Los Angeles): Mahjong Mistress Is Bringing New Life to a Centuries-Old Game
• Slate (Los Angeles): Breaking Down the Walls - Mahjong used to be a board game for Chinese grandmas. Now everyone wants to play.
• The Occidental (Los Angeles): Mahjong Club provides students an opportunity to immerse themselves in Chinese culture

Mahjong Underground at General Lee's

475 Gin Ling Wy, Los Angeles, CA 90012

My favorite place to play mahjong is at a bar in Chinatown called General Lee's. Every Thursday, Mahjong Underground hosts a mahjong thing there from 8 to 11ish/11:30ish. They have their own tables and mahjong sets so you just have to show up. Best of all, it's free. The second best thing, they're consistently throwing the event every week and have the most frequent games going on in town, from what I've experienced. The only thing you spend money on is your drinks at the bar. Most of the people there play Hong Kong-style mahjong (13 tiles), but you can play whatever you want if you can gather enough players with the knowledge. Some people play Taiwanese-style (16 tiles) and occasionally you'll see a Szechuan game going on. I talked to the guy who runs the event, Finnegan, and learned that it was an offshoot of Lowheads Mahjong Club (related to the online streetwear marketplace) that used to meet up at the same place in late 2023. I don't know what happened to Lowheads, but remnants of the previous club exist in the form of the firetruck red-backed mahjong tiles with LOW etched into them that occasionally appear at one of the tables:

I'm constantly meeting new people at the tables and extending conversations over drinks after we play. My favorite mahjong story I witnessed there was seeing these guys named Doc and Patrick walk in one night to DJ upstairs. They had never been to General Lee's before and were surprised and intrigued to see a whole gang of people playing mahjong downstairs. Doc and I ended up talking for hours about bánh mì, cheeseburgers, and merch production. Doc and Patrick didn't know how to play, but they came back the next week to hang out and drink and chat and watch some games. They ended up sitting at some tables and learned how to play that night. They've been back practically every week and they both regularly win.

Doc winning the fuck out of some mahjong with a chow

A few other times I'd play with this girl Jeany, who was also Vietnamese (like me). After a few games, we both learned that not only did we both live in Houston at the same time, but we went to the same college, both rode fixed-gear, and we both went to the same dive bars in Montrose all the time. Somehow we missed each other over those years, but we were apparently destined to meet at a mahjong table in Los Angeles a decade later. Whenever we play mahjong together, I inform the other people at the table that Jeany and I went to college together in Houston, as if they cared.

Mahjong Underground has become the de facto meetup spot for most other regular players around LA. I've made friends around town at other mahjong parlors and I've run into all of them here, but not the other way around. Katrina, a really skilled player who I've played with at all the other clubs, told me Mahjong Underground is less chaotic than other clubs, somehow, and it's easier to just sit at a table and get a game going. I also regularly see Jin here, who I originally met at East Never Loses and played with in the LA Mahjong League tournament last Saturday. I've even ran into Angie, the organizer of contemporary mahjong events as East Never Loses and Mahjong Mistress, playing a Taiwanese-style game here one night.

LA Mahjong League

Another place I like to play at is LA Mahjong League (Instagram). This place pops up at a few different places around LA, but I prefer when they have games at Mandarin Plaza in Chinatown in front of Steep, the tea shop that one of LA Mahjong League's organizers also helps run. Unlike Mahjong Underground, LA Mahjong League is a formal mahjong club that plays Taiwanese-style and has a set of house rules and a point-system that's to be followed for all games. Even though they have food and drinks at all of the events they hold, this is not a casual game. I come here to work on winning faster and racking up points. LA Mahjong League also has teaching sessions for newcomers and open-play sessions for all levels of players. The organizers Sam and Nancy walk around to field questions and help with scoring. This is probably the smallest place I play at and if you want less of a bar/nightclub environment and more of a cafe/coffee shop vibe, this is probably where you want to learn and play mahjong.

East Never Loses

Another place you'll see me at every once in a while is East Never Loses (Instagram). They host mahjong events at different venues around LA, like Fatty Mart or Hauser & Wirth. This is how I got into mahjong in the first place. My friend Ruby posted a story on Instagram about how she was TA'ing at a mahjong event I'd never heard of called East Never Loses at Jianghu, a Chinese bar and restaurant in Alhambra. This was finally my excuse to learn mahjong because the event would have tables and tiles and, most importantly, people to play with. I bought an East Never Loses ticket online, watched some videos on YouTube about how to play mahjong, attempted to play some games online, and then a week later, I was at Jianghu. I did some practice rounds, asked some TAs questions about how to roll the dice and start the game (the most complicated part of mahjong), and before I knew it, I was in the open-play section beating people. Like LA Mahjong League, East Never Loses plays Taiwanese-style mahjong and they have their own set of rules and a points system that must be followed at every table. Every East Never Loses event I've been to has been packed and mostly EDM music is blaring, usually from a live DJ. Occasionally a dance party and/or karaoke sessions break out. This is definitely the loudest mahjong event I go to. If you're the kind of person who just wants to play a few rounds of mahjong and then drink/socialize in the club, this is probably your kinda place.

Angie of East Never Loses is also a founding member of the Mahjong Mistress entourage, who are still around. Mahjong Mistress hosts events where you can play mahjong at places like the Spare Room at the Hollywood Roosevelt or the Historic Schindler House.

Lucky Bamboo Mahjong Club

418 Bamboo Ln, Los Angeles, CA 90012

The last place I'll talk about is also where I teach: Lucky Bamboo Mahjong Club at Studious Coworking in Chinatown. We usually have this on the 2nd Friday of every month starting at 6:30 PM until 9:30 PM; 20-minute mahjong lessons begin every hour starting at 7 PM, free play/social play goes on the entire time. I started teaching here out of pure happenstance, but that's the thing about mahjong: it's a conversation-starter and a bridge-builder. This is a small, quiet, well-lit mahjong night resembling more of a lecture/instruction session than a party. In fact, this is definitely not a party. This is a place to have civil conversations with strangers and neighbors and play mahjong without loud music, liquor, and dim lights. If you don't like parties and nightclubs, but still want to socialize with people and learn or play mahjong, this is where you should come. There's usually food and drinks, it's well-lit and ventilated, and I give everyone a cheatsheet that helps you play and understand the game. There's also an optional lecture/demonstration I give every hour where you can see a slideshow about a brief history of the game before I go into detail of how to to play and, more importantly, how to understand and win the game in a simple way. I really hate seeing people stressed out and frustrated while playing mahjong so I designed my lesson in a way that teaches people how to play in a relaxed, simple style. Plus, the logo I drew is really cute:

The first time I came here was when my friend Yuenyi told me she was going to a board/card game night & potluck in Chinatown at a place called Studious Coworking and asked me if I wanted to come. I told her absolutely not. The only game I like is mahjong and I have absolutely no interest in "professional mixers" or the dreaded LA "networking event." She said please and I told her OK, I'd give it a shot, but I'm bringing a mahjong set and I probably wasn't going to have fun. I was wrong. When I showed up, I checked in, wrote myself a nametag, and immediately dumped the mahjong tiles out on the squarest table in the room. The thing about mahjong is that when you start setting up, if someone knows how to play, they immediately come over and start talking to you about the game. Other times, people will come up to you and ask you if the game is hard. Both of these things happened. The first game I played this night was against 3 people, all of whom didn't know one another. Two of them had never played and one was from Guangzhou (a Cantonese-speaking city in south China) who had played before but was a bit rusty. Surprisingly, I was able to teach everyone the game within 5 minutes and we got to playing. The second game was against Lawrence, a regular at the spot who was from a Hong Kong family and grew up in Australia, my friend Yuenyi, and another Asian guy who didn't know how to play. Judy, one of the bosses of the coworking space, saw me playing and teaching and asked me if I was interested in joining them for mahjong the following Tuesday. I accepted and when I showed up, I realized I misinterpreted the invitation.

It turned out that Judy and the 5 or 6 other people there just wanted to learn how to play mahjong; it wasn't a mahjong night with several tables and games going on at the same time like at the other places I described. I didn't have a problem with it, though, because the neighborhood is more fun when more people know how to play mahjong. I gave everyone a cheatsheet of what the tiles mean and how to win the game and then explained a brief summary of gameplay dynamics. Less than 10 minutes after explaining the tiles and rules, were playing. Angie, the Mahjong Mistress from East Never Loses, said something about mahjong being a time machine that turned hours into minutes. It's true. By the time I knew it, 3 hours had passed. Before we left, Judy asked me if I'd like to host a mahjong night like this again for the Chinatown community. Because I love going to so many established mahjong events around town already, including Mahjong Underground who literally shared a wall with Studious Coworking, I told her I'd only do it under two conditions: it couldn't be a party and it had to lean heavier on inexperienced people learning how to play rather than seasoned players playing. She agreed and suggested that I include some Chinese history of the game in my presentation, which I thought was a great idea; this is what led me to an obsession with the different mahjong terms used by different Chinese dialects. I thought it was incredibly important, but I couldn't find anyone who had written about this online. This is what I mean:

When playing 13-tile mahjong (Hong Kong-style) in America, there are 3 main combinations you need to remember: chow, pung, and kong. These are the American English terms that were phonetically derived from actual Chinese terms. A chow consists of 3 sequential tiles in order, a pong consists of 3 identical tiles, and a kong consists of 4 identical tiles. In Mandarin, the terms are 吃 or chī (to eat), 碰 or pèng (to bump), and 槓 or gàng (bar or pole). In Cantonese, these same terms are 上 or soeng5 (to go up or to elevate), 碰 or pung3 (to bump), and 槓 or gong3 (bar or pole). It's good to know all of the terms for the three major languages/dialects, but the great thing about mahjong is you can use any of the three and everyone else will understand you, even if they don't speak the same language. The terms are pretty close in sound and all of the players know the concepts, which are more important than the actual words.

The table below has all three variations next to each other for comparison:

Before I knew the Cantonese and Mandarin, there had actually been some misunderstandings between me and some new Chinese-speaking mahjong players because I didn't know that most Cantonese-speaking players from Hong Kong say 上 or soeng5 (meaning "to elevate") instead of "eat". It got even more confusing when I met some Cantonese-speaking players from Guangdong (southern Mainland China) who actually use the Cantonese term 食 or sik6, which means "to eat" to describe 3 identical tiles.

While talking to different Cantonese and Mandarin speakers about this, it got me wondering about the American English term "chow". Again, 3 sequential tiles is described as a "chow" in American English and in Mandarin the word is 吃 which sounds like "che" and means "to eat". Some players describe the action of "chowing" another person's tile as "eating" the tile. This Mandarin word was picked up from sailors and actually became the basis of the American English slang term of "chow" which refers to food or eating. Interestingly, I also learned that there is a Cantonese word that also sounds similar; 抄 is pronounced "caau1" which sounds a lot like "chow" and it means "to steal" or "to copy"; it's possible that the American English term "chow" was picked up from this word as the description of the move can be described as "eating" another person's tile or "stealing" another person's tile.

Sometimes I'll go to a late-night Chinese restaurant (specifically, Hop Woo) after a mahjong game and talk to the servers there about my night. I realized that they mostly spoke Cantonese and often knew how to play mahjong. I looked into it and learned that most Chinatowns around the world were havens for immigrants from Hong Kong. It got me thinking that maybe I should learn Cantonese because I'm spending so much of my time in Chinatown playing mahjong, getting wasted, and eating roasted duck.

Petrine TX is an artist, jeweler, and gambler based in Los Angeles. He specializes in figurative oil painting and gold grillz.