MAH JONG
We have two Mah Jong groups running now. One group meets every second, third and fourth Wednesday afternoons at the Woosehill Community Hall. The group has only been running for about six months and the majority of those in the group were absolute beginners at the game initially. Now, however, they are becoming quite knowledgeable. The second group has been running for some years and meets in an evening. The numbers in this group is limited by reason of where it meets but for those interested in learning the game the daytime group would welcome more members.
For those of you who have not met the game before, it is an old Chinese game, played by four players ( one can play with three also ) which has only more recently spread to the Western World.
The game is played with a special Mah Jong set which consists of 144 small rectangular tiles, the more expensive ones made from bone and bamboo, as are the Chinese sets, and the less expensive ones from plastic. Similar to a set of cards, the tiles are divided into suits and each suit has honour tiles and ordinary suit tiles. This is where the similarity ends as there are only three suits in a Mah Jong set and these are the 'bamboo', 'character' and 'circle' suits. The tiles are numbered from 1 to 9 with numbers 1 and 9 being honours. All the tiles in a set are very attractively decorated with the suit emblems. There are further honours tiles which are the four winds and three dragons - white, red and green and the final tiles are two sets of four bonus tiles called variously 'flowers' or 'seasons'. The basic principle of the game, although it is played using a square wall built with the tiles, is rather like a game of Rummy but very much more complicated. However, once a beginner has got used to what all the tiles look like and can recognise them easily learning the game is not too difficult, great fun and absorbing.
September 2008