"One bam."
"Four crack."
"Flower."
"My wall's done."
"Shanghai!"
The ambient noises of Mah Jongg are usually associated with retirement homes in Florida or afternoons at a New Jersey women's club. The conversation above, however, took place on the floor of a Tufts student's apartment in Somerville.
Now that the 18-to-35 demographic is far enough removed from the era of the Baby Boomers to find the 1960s romanticized and retro, the door to pop culture has been opened to let in anything that references an age that young people view with nostalgia, unmarred by the possibility of bad memories. This fascination has resulted in the success of television shows such as AMC's "Mad Men" and ABC's possible airing of "Pan Am," a drama about the lives of stewardesses in the '60s, as well as the boom of companies such as Modcloth.com that sell the kind of vintage clothes featured on these shows.
So if younger demographics are enjoying the clothes and drama of their grandparents' generation, why not enjoy the pastimes as well?
History of the game
Few games have more nebulous origins than the game of Mah Jongg. Some claim Confucius created it around 500 BCE, some say it was invented by Westerners and merely marketed as an ancient Chinese game and others insist it was played by Noah on the ark. No matter how it began initially, John Babcock is usually credited as the Westerner who introduced the infectious fad to the United States when he sold sets to Abercrombie and Fitch in 1919.
The game quickly took hold of the public's interest, most notably in New York City, where women would host Mah Jongg parties in their living rooms replete with paper lanterns, kimonos, Chinese food and anything considered fun and "oriental" (with the exception of the requisite Western martini). Mah Jongg parties became status symbols of sorts — in a 1924 Washington Post column, Mildred Holland wrote that the game afforded an "opportunity for displaying rings and bracelets … making the most of hands which are pretty in shape, texture, grace and grooming."
Mah Jongg fever reached its pitch in 1924, with famous singers like Eddie Cantor writing songs about it ("Since Ma is Playing Mah Jong") and Life magazine commemorating its popularity with a depiction of "Ma and Pa Jongg" playing the game on its cover.
Sadly, as happens with all fads, Mah Jongg's popularity began to wane, and it had all but petered out by the Great Depression. It wasn't until 1937 that the game was reintroduced to American society by members of the National Mah Jongg League, founded by a group of Jewish women.
Though the elegant game had fallen out of fashion with New York's elite, it had retained an avid following among Jewish women in the city. The reasons for the Jewish community's interest in the game cannot be pinpointed to one cause — it may be that it was a symbol of inclusion in American society for a group of immigrants or that the Jewish Lower East Side sat right next to Chinatown, and the Chinese symbols and characters on the game's tiles evoked a kindred feeling among the two immigrant groups.
Whatever the reason, the National Mah Jongg League formed to standardize the rules of the game (which had previously varied from household to household), and thus created what is known as American Mah Jongg.
In the years that followed, Mah Jongg became the game of Jewish housewives as a means of socialization during the day while the children were at school and the husbands were at work. It received a major deathblow in the '70s, though, when women started to work full-time jobs and began to resent the hours-long games of Mah Jongg that their housebound mothers used to play.
It is from this setback that the game is reemerging today.
Mah Jongg: The Comeback Kid
According to Faye Scher, the owner of WhereTheWindsBlow.com, a site that sells Mah Jongg gifts and accessories, the surge in interest in Mah Jongg among 25-35-year-olds began about five to 10 years ago.
"I get new players calling with kids playing in the background (25-30) … Women from Florida that are just learning to play as they retire (60s), and I get the grandmothers who have played for 45 years, but they are buying sets for their grandchildren," Scher said in an e-mail to the Daily.
Though many of Scher's customers are from older generations, she is quick to note that in recent years, she has sold sets as gifts for bar mitzvahs and bridal showers.
Board game bars and restaurants, particularly in New York City, are introducing sets into their repertoire as young professionals come to play the game, relax and socialize. Sites such as Meetup.com have entire groups devoted to gathering Mah Jongg enthusiasts together to play and usually attract a younger crowd. Clearly, the generational gap is slowly closing.
Mah Jongg at Tufts
At Tufts, Mah Jongg has begun to take a slow but steady hold on students' interest.
Senior Julia Bartolomeo hosts a weekly Mah Jongg game in her apartment.
"My grandma picked it up as a hobby and decided to teach me and my sister and my cousins one Christmas," Bartolomeo said. "We all ended up really enjoying it, despite our initial skepticism."
As a salute to her interest in the game, Bartolomeo's parents gave her a set for her birthday one year, and she instantly began sharing the game with her friends.
"I ended up teaching some of my friends at home and at school so that I would have people to play with," Bartolomeo said. "It's a fun group game. It's tricky to learn at first, but if you take the time to teach people, they tend to really like it."
Now, Bartolomeo unpacks her Mah Jongg set once a week, and different combinations of the friends she has taught come to play and socialize. There may not be any paper lanterns or silk kimonos, but Tufts students have found ways to enjoy Mah Jongg in a manner that fits into busy schedules.
And it's not just American Mah Jongg that has found resonance among students on the Hill. Jesse Mark, a sophomore, bought a Japanese Mah Jongg set and has also played a weekly game.
These gatherings, he said, offer relaxation and entertainment in the middle of a busy student's schedule.
"Last semester we would meet in one of our rooms in Carmichael and put on some music or maybe have the TV on silent," Mark said. "It was very casual."
Virtual Versions
One of the biggest obstacles to younger generations playing Mah Jongg is the price of the sets. Though prices have dropped since tiles started to be made out of plastic instead of the original bone, few students are willing to shell out upwards of $100 for a parlor game.
An easy alternative is the several forms of Mah Jongg available online or as smartphone applications. Even the National Mah Jongg League has created its own online version of the game for members without their own sets.
According to players, though, the virtual experience is incomparable to the physical version.
"It's just better playing in person and having the tiles in front of you," Mark said.
Online versions also ignore the incredibly social aspect of the game that has been integral to its success from the evening parties of the '20s to the weekly gatherings in Tufts dorms. Now that the stigma surrounding the game as the pastime of gossiping housewives and grandmothers is slowly dissipating, there seems to be room at Tufts — and in the homes of young people across the nation — for the fad to grow again.
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