Everyone’s Playing Mahjong—But Whose Stories Are Getting Told?
15 Asian Americans in the mahjong world weigh in on coverage, credit, and who’s cashing in.
Hi everyone,
I’m writing to you from Shanghai, where I’m visiting family, and as it turns out, walking down memory lane. Golden Hour usually lives in the world of travel and hospitality, but today, I want to talk to you about mahjong. It feels only right to tell this story from the city where I first encountered the game.
I didn’t grow up playing mahjong. My mahjong education came late, and with it, a nagging insecurity of not feeling “Chinese enough” throughout my 20s. Growing up, I was taught to keep my distance from the game. Mahjong is gambling, my family warned. Don’t touch it, or you’ll get addicted. I was told that women who played too much were considered “白相人嫂嫂” (frivolous and unserious). And as a child, I remember stealing quick, forbidden glances into the dim interiors of “棋牌室” (poker and mahjong parlors) with both caution and curiosity. The rattling of tiles paired with wafts of cigarette smoke made me shudder. I was convinced something shady was going on.
Being back in this city now in my 30s, softer memories have surfaced. Just days ago, I walked by a group of elders playing mahjong on a street corner. A small ring of neighbors and passersby formed around them, hands clasped behind their backs, chiming in whether invited to or not. I used to see this everywhere—at Fuxing Park, on Huashan Road, or in front of a “弄堂” (a residential alleyway)—the way a single game could magnetically pull strangers into a tight, animated huddle. Last week, I also learned that my late grandmother used to take a 30-minute bus ride across town every week just to play mahjong and banter with her girlfriends all afternoon. I didn’t learn the game from her, but somehow it still feels inseparable from me, from Shanghainese culture, and from Chinese life. For many people in the Asian diaspora, it has become a way of finding our way home.
If you’ve been online lately, you’ve probably noticed that mahjong is having a moment. Much of the coverage, however, centers on American style mahjong, specifically its aesthetics and profitability, rather than mahjong’s origins, cultural depth, and 40+ regional variants. A recent Vogue article traced a writer’s introduction to the game through a non-Asian-owned mahjong brand, ending with shopping recommendations for $15,000 luxury designer sets (and slightly more “accessible” options, though most of them not crafted by Asian makers). The Boston Globe highlighted how a growing number of white women are turning mahjong into their next business venture—“an alternative, perhaps, to the real estate agent or life coach pivot.”
Even on social media, its own kind of newsroom, an NPR Instagram post resurfaced an earlier story (aired nationally for All Things Considered) that featured Nicole Wong of The Mahjong Project, a leading voice in the space, yet failed to name her, tag her, or reflect Asian representation in its imagery. Two weeks ago, Diet Prada’s post about Oh My Mahjong’s “Glitterville Mahjong Sets” and $1,000+ “Heritage” starter kit sent the internet into a tizzy, bringing the conversation to a boiling point. The post also featured the brand’s now-deleted social media post, in which they “slapped” the New York Times logo and a pull-quote from a recent NYT’s Real Estate story about various game brands onto a photo of their founder and her interior designer—leading many to believe they were the main subjects of the story. In the article, the founder was quoted saying: “Mahjong is becoming this beautiful way of hosting—not just slapping a game on the table,” taking issue with the very way families have been playing for generations.
The list of examples goes on.
I think the cold hard truth is that history has a habit of repeating itself. Ever since Joseph Park Babcock brought mahjong from Suzhou to the U.S. in the 1920s, the game has been caught between two anti-Asian, racist extremes: exoticized for its “Oriental appeal” and patronized as something in dire need of “Western refinement” (I recommend watching this video for a mahjong history lesson with Dr. Annelise Heinz, and if you have the stomach for it, search for the 1924 song “Since Ma is Playing Mah Jong” by the Original Memphis Five).
We’re seeing a romanticization of Chinese culture play out again with the rise of “Chinamaxxing”—the viral trend where Westerners adopt Chinese lifestyle habits and aesthetics for the “vibe.” And when it comes to mahjong, it feels like something unmistakably Chinese is once again being repackaged, renamed (e.g., mahj, mah-jongg), aestheticized, and sold back as something entirely detached from the culture it belongs to and the people who created it.
To be clear, my goal isn’t to demonize American mahjong or sneer at anyone whose first exposure to the game was American style. After all, games evolve over time, and not everyone grew up playing with their grandparents or lives in a city with a thriving mahjong scene and large Asian population. American mahjong has its own layered history, including a deeply meaningful place in Jewish American communities throughout the 20th century. I simply want to share that there are many Asian-led mahjong clubs in the U.S. whose voices and stories remain largely absent from the mainstream media narrative. Whether it’s intentional oversight, cursory research, or a belief that these aren’t the stories that “sell,” the missed opportunity is glaring. I hope this can be an invitation to start shifting the spotlight onto the people that have been playing all along.
Meet the Community
About a month ago, I started doing some armchair research on mahjong, but didn’t feel like I was getting the full picture. A friend introduced me to Kiem Sie, who teaches mahjong across the San Francisco Bay Area. Over coffee in Oakland, we talked about her family’s roots in Java, Indonesia, and how she first learned mahjong 25 years ago from her friends. She didn’t realize it was American mahjong until her late father corrected her (“Kiem, that’s not real mahjong”). Eventually, he gifted her one of his vintage, hand-carved 144-tile sets, which I was lucky enough to see in person.
Over the following weeks, I spoke with 15 different Asian Americans in the mahjong space—instructors, event organizers, club founders, and restaurant owners—representing Chinese, Hong Kong, Taiwanese, and Filipino styles of play.
Kiem introduced me to fellow instructor Cindy Chiu, who runs “Teaching Tuesdays” at San Francisco’s Mr. Mahjong’s, as well as Jenn Lui and Alan Chen of 13 Orphans, an Oakland-based mahjong den and speakeasy. Likewise in the F&B space, I connected with Randi Lee of Brooklyn’s Leland Eating & Drinking House, who hosts mahjong events in their restaurant space; and Nancy Hsu and Samuel Wang of LA Mahjong League, who met serendipitously at Steep LA, the Chinatown modern tearoom, bar, and eatery co-owned by Samuel.
I also reached out to several folks already familiar with the media spotlight to pick their brains on the recent mahjong boom: Nicole Wong, founder of The Mahjong Project and author of Mahjong: House Rules from Across the Asian Diaspora; Sarah Teng, co-founder of NYC-based Green Tile Social Club (with Joanne Xu, Grace Liu, and Ernest Chan); Subhas Kandasamy, founder of NYC-based Mahjong Palace; and Angie Lin (QQ), founder of LA-based East Never Loses.
Lastly, I spoke with founders building mahjong communities outside the major NYC-LA-Bay Area hubs: Jacob Chang of Tampa’s Red Eye Mahjong, Tan Macaraeg of Seattle’s QTMahjong Club, Michael Wang of Chicago’s 144 Tiles Mahjong Club, who kindly introduced me to Jay Zhao of the San Gabriel Valley’s Common Ground Mahjong (a local alternative to the LA circuit).
I discovered a community that’s heartwarmingly tight-knit. They share articles in group chats, show up to one another’s events, and champion each other’s work. It was a gift to get a glimpse into their world. So, what did I hear from them? Let’s get into it.
The Real Talk
1. Mahjong doesn’t have a media visibility problem—it has a respect and depth-of-coverage problem.
Most people agree that mahjong’s sudden spotlight is, overall, a positive thing. Subhas describes the recent attention from the Financial Times, Vogue, and CNN Travel, among others, as surreal and flattering. Sarah also notes that the surge in popularity is worth celebrating, pointing to a New York Times feature on a Green Tile Social Club event as a rare example of a well-rounded article that did the community justice.
Having seen the game thrive in her home state of Texas, however, Sarah says that the cultural recognition hasn’t kept up with the hype: “We’re very plugged into how mahjong has grown there. Dallas mahjong clubs have really blown up, but the plug-in doesn’t go both ways. I’d love to gently tap these communities and ask: How much research did you actually do?”
Jay offers an analogy for this lack of depth: “Refusing to recognize the roots of mahjong is like refusing to learn the pronunciation of someone else’s name. Asian players learn other styles all the time. We do the work.”
As Subhas and Sarah pointed out, not all coverage misses the mark. In May 2025, Vogue published a personal essay by Nicole titled “Mahjong, My Grandparents, and Me,” which really moved me and prompted me to reach out to her. During our conversation, Nicole told me that while the game’s sudden popularity is thrilling, the coverage often falls short.
“It’s been disorienting and disappointing to see how the game is being covered by some mainstream media outlets,” she explains. “If someone is broadly covering the popularity of mahjong, I think it’s incredibly important they acknowledge the various styles and communities who play. It’s important to show that they are researching the game and can write about it with nuance and specificity.”
2. For many Asian Americans, mahjong’s big moment is tied to a generational fight to be seen.
Randi, who is half-Chinese, recalls how his father didn’t feel proud of his Chinese heritage until much later in life—a byproduct of living through a time when assimilation felt like the only survival strategy. “Now, we’re actively seeking out that culture,” Randi says. “As a third-generation Chinese American, I feel proud of what my family carried forward, but I don’t know if our voices are always fully heard.”
Fellow restaurateur, Alan, adds: “If we flash back to The Joy Luck Club and Better Luck Tomorrow, you really see that Asians have been assimilating for decades. We’ve slowly clawed our way forward—we built the railroads and we’re not done building!”
Speaking of clawing our way forward, I’m reminded of Jay Caspian Kang’s 2021 book, The Loneliest Americans, and how progress for Asian Americans often hits a ceiling within a Black-white racial binary. That tension between being seen and being ignored surfaced in my conversation with Cindy: “As an Asian American, it’s hard to be in this limbo of visibility and invisibility. Sometimes I think, maybe there shouldn’t be a spotlight on mahjong, because it’ll get ruined. There’s real-time erasure happening, and it’s offensive when they’re taking us out of the equation.”
Beyond media narratives, this dilution shows up in the very language of the game—reducing tiles to “cracks,” “bams,” and “dragons”—and in the redesign of the sets themselves. Games evolve, but many mahjong club founders draw a firm line on erasure: “People can create new variants,” Michael says. “But anything that contributes to a deeper culture of exclusivity and further erasure of our language feels wrong.”
For Samuel, the mechanics of the game and the Chinese characters on the tiles are non-negotiable. He isn’t offended by different styles of play, but he won’t tolerate the claim that a Westernized version of a centuries-old game is “better.” Sitting on the same call, Nancy says that it’s personal: “I’m not a purist. I know things evolve and take on new iterations, but I grew up playing mahjong, so it’s not just my culture—it’s my family too. When I see erasure and misappropriation, it affects me.” Kiem’s solution is pretty direct: “Can’t read Chinese? Learn it then.”
There’s a particular gut punch that comes with seeing Kung Yau Cheung Mahjong—a legacy Hong Kong shop that hand carved tiles for half a century—close its doors on March 28, while elsewhere, the founder of Oh My Mahjong tells Vanity Fair: “People want new. They appreciate the beauty. Three years ago, it was all very not pretty. It was ugly. It was black font, green, red, and very not this fun, beautiful thing.”
When sets are whitewashed, stripped of Chinese characters, or “beautified” into something barely recognizable, the game becomes a flattened version of what it once was. “Sets are now designed in ways that lose their original intent and Chinese numbers are bastardized to a point where you can’t even recognize the tiles,” says Jay.
To Nancy, it mirrors the 2019 Lucky Lee’s controversy, where a white woman marketed her now-defunct restaurant as serving “clean,” “not too oily” Chinese food that won’t leave you “feeling bloated.” “If you’re claiming you’re ‘clean’,” she says, “then you’re saying other versions ostensibly made by Chinese people are ‘dirty.’”
3. American mahjong brands are generating millions, but the profits aren’t flowing back to the Asian American community.
Growing up, I saw mahjong as a game of the people, so the $15,000 price tags—and reports on certain American mahjong lifestyle brands racking up $30 million in annual revenue—came as a shock. It certainly doesn’t feel like that massive windfall is finding its way back into Asian and Asian American pockets.
But it’s not just the price; it’s also the empire-building, “pay-to-play” business model that further creates inaccessibility. Players often purchase an annual card from the National Mah Jongg League to access official hands for gameplay. Between paid lessons, $1,300 instructor training programs, and high-premium equipment like racks and mats, a communal game has morphed into a luxury good or something closer to a country club membership. To play, you must pay. To stay in the club, you must keep paying.
To Tan, the commercialization violates the game’s spirit: “I have a huge problem with paid mahjong classes. I just think it is fundamentally wrong. [And] there is no reason to be buying mahjong sets from non-Asians.”
It effectively puts a paywall around something that never had one to begin with. As Angie puts it: “Elite, wealthy white women are using mahjong to build their lifestyle businesses, monetizing it without cultural understanding or recognition—and our Asian communities are not profiting from what they’re doing. I really can’t sell what is inherently ours.”
Most Asian-led mahjong clubs aren’t in it for the money. Cindy taught free classes through the San Francisco Parks Alliance, and even now at Mr. Mahjong’s, seniors play at no cost. Jay started Common Ground mahjong nights in the parking lot of SGV’s 626 Hospitality Group, prioritizing Asian-owned businesses over profit. By hosting Thursday mahjong nights at non-alcoholic cocktail lounge, Free Spirited Lounge, they helped drive enough traffic for the business to now invest in its own sets. In Chicago, 50% of proceeds from Michael’s 144 Tiles events go toward social justice organizations. In Seattle, Tan and QTMahjong Club keep their events rooted in Chinatown-International District, putting money back into local businesses.
The Bottom Line
Mahjong is meant to be shared, but it still needs to be handled with care. It’s oral history, a bridge between generations, a sanctuary, and an inextricable part of Asian and Asian American identity. Yet through the erasure and misappropriation, the people I spoke to aren’t trying to gatekeep the table. They’re making sure there’s a welcoming seat for everyone while also maintaining a safe space for queer and BIPOC communities.
For Randi, that means keeping the doors wide open for the community to eat, drink, and play. In Florida, Jacob has found joy in being one of the first movers there, building a scene from the ground up, where his audience skews largely non-Asian. “While this is a Chinese game, it resonates with all sorts of people and backgrounds, and that’s what I specifically love about it,” he says.
Subhas, who creates inclusive spaces for mahjong players over 40 to feel seen, believes that centering the conversation solely on one demographic isn’t true inclusivity: “I don’t feel I’ve become any less Asian, just because I cater to a non-Asian crowd.”
For some, the game is actually a way to heal. “I’m grateful for mahjong as a community builder,” says Jenn. “After COVID, people were really seeking connection. We’ve seen a lot of good times and happy faces because of the game.” Within the Asian American community, Angie has seen mahjong mend families where the sound of clacking tiles used to serve as a trauma trigger.
I’ll end with this: We have a narrative to reclaim. Please follow all these incredible Asian-led mahjong clubs on social media, watch their videos, attend their events, and spread the word. Many of them regularly share instructional resources and cultural commentary too.
If you’re looking to join a game, check out Connor Wan's Global Mahjong Community Directory for a comprehensive list of Asian mahjong clubs around the world.
If you’d like to learn more about the game or get a refresh on the rules, I recommend taking a look at Nicole Wong’s book or downloading Lili Chin’s pocket guide.
Thank you so much for reading my newsletter, and hope you enjoyed it! If there’s anything you loved or didn’t quite connect with, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Your feedback is truly appreciated and will help me make this a more enjoyable read for you!
Until next time, Laura x
I first heard the click of mahjong tiles in the Philippines as a child--and now my mom is learning to play -- from another white American woman. Thank you for taking the time to reveal more to appreciate about the culture and the game. I was a bit appalled at the "subscribe for the annual update" model.
As a Cantonese American that was forbidden from learning mahjong, I'm now loving to see the game so potently in our third-culture/ American landscape (I've been a lot more in tune with its rise and impact in different communities since also interviewing Nicole Wong for Tomatokind a couple years ago...before she released her fabulous book!). YES....AND, I recognize the nuance of this rise in mahjong playing and who is dominating its narrative (and love that you shine a light on these fantastic Asian-led movements)! You're also just a downright amazing writer, and I'm scintillated by your coverage of travel, culture, and beyond. So lovely to be (newly) in your world.