The Willow Glen Resident Photograph by Skye Dunlap Wild Tiles: Mah Jong games at the Willows Senior Center, where the game is played three times a week, can last more than two hours. Banned ancient Chinese tile game sees a resurgence in Willow Glen Mah Jong attracts more players to the Willows Senior Center every week By Michelle Ku Seated around the table are four players looking at their cards intently. One of them breaks the silence by placing a tile in the center of the table and calling out, "North." Anne Hendriksz reaches over and picks up a tile, glances at it briefly, and says, "Four cracks," as she puts the tile face-up on the table. A smile lights up Faye Marsh's face as she swoops up the tile Hendriksz just released and places it face-up on her rack alongside the other two she already had. And so it begins. For the next two and a half hours, Hendriksz, Marsh and two companions will play Mah Jong at one of the two organized games held at Willows Senior Center. Since August, Willows has become a hotbed of activity for avid Mah Jong players and people interested in learning the game. From 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. every Monday and Saturday, anywhere from three to eight Mah Jong fanatics can be seen whiling the afternoon hours away in a private room at Willows. Kirk Senior Center also offers a weekly Mah Jong game, where players have to share the room with other card players at Kirk. The Willows Mah Jong crowd say they enjoy playing without the distraction. "It's much easier playing at Willows because we have our own private room," says Bernice Gaon, a Willow Glen resident and a Mah Jong player for 31 years. "You can't have any background noise because you have to listen to the tiles being thrown. If people are playing bridge or canasta in the background, it's hard to hear the tiles being thrown." Mah Jong--also spelled Mah Jongg and commonly called Maj--is played with 152 tiles consisting of four suits, like playing cards. Mah Jong tiles also contain directional winds, flowers, three types of dragons and jokers, which are wild. The game is said to have originated in China more than 2,000 years ago. One story suggests that Confucius developed the game around 500 B.C. Two brothers named White introduced Mah Jong to the West in the early 1900s. From there, the game spread. Today, Mah Jong is an international game, and different variations have developed. The two main variations are the Chinese and the American styles. The programs at Willows and Kirk play the American style. The Mah Jong program at Willows was started four months ago by Marsh, a Mah Jong player for 30 years. She learned how to play Mah Jong while she was living in Texas. Marsh says her children were little, and a couple of her friends taught her how to play during the day. "I didn't like playing cards, and this was something I took to and love to play," Marsh says. Marsh stopped playing Mah Jong when she moved to California 12 years ago, but since her retirement five years ago, she started playing at Kirk's weekly game. While playing at Kirk, Marsh wanted to start a Mah Jong program at Willows. "I participate at Willows more than at Kirk so I advertised about starting a program in the monthly bulletin," Marsh says. "One by one, people started coming and sometimes we have as many as eight people." The games are held on a walk-in basis and are open to the public. New players--even people who have never played but are interested in learning--are always welcome to join, Marsh says. The group has taught several people how to play already. "There are a lot of people who just started and they are a little frightened to play," says Gaon, who learned when she was 14. "But once you start, you have to play to learn." During the cold winter nights while she was growing up in New York City, all the adults played Mah Jong--so Gaon and the other kids learned as well, she says. In fact, this group taught Hendriksz, a Blossom Hill resident, how to play. Two months ago, she was looking for a game, and visited Southside Senior Center where someone was trying to set up a Mah Jong program. "I had never heard of Mah Jong before," Hendriksz says. "I was just looking for an interesting game to play because I was tired of playing Canasta." After sitting in on the game, Hendriksz joined Marsh's group. Since learning about Mah Jong, Hendriksz now plays three times a week--twice at Willows and once at Kirk. "It's a game that holds your attention," Hendriksz says. "I come in and don't think of anything else but Maj until I leave." The American style of Mah Jong is dictated by the National Mah Jongg League in New York. Players form "hands" based on rules issued each year, and a new card of "playable hands" is issued by the league each spring. Similar to rummy or poker, most of the hands require that a player get consecutive tiles, or three or four of a tile in a certain suit. "It's really fun and it never gets boring because the card changes every year," Gaon says. "Even though you might learn the hands, by the time you learn the entire card, it's time for a new card. So no matter how good you are, you're starting from scratch because you have to learn a whole new card again." While the popularity of Mah Jong has grown internationally, the game was suppressed in China for almost 50 years. Since 1950, China discouraged the play of Mah Jong because it was one of the four "olds"--old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits. During the 1960s and '70s, Mah Jong was completely banned in China. In 1998, China reclassified Mah Jong as a sport and allowed public games again. For more information about the Mah Jong program at Willows Senior Center, contact Fay Marsh at 448-6400. To learn more about Mah Jong, visit the official National Mah Jongg League Web site at beachsite.com/maj/index.html. [ Back to Contents Page | Willow Glen Resident Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Willow Glen Resident, December 23, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.