I've found a great site today at http://www.mahjongmuseum.com/. I was looking for some images of sets of mah jong tiles and boy did I find some. I copied several, the used PhotoShop to cut out individual tiles, and used them to ornament invitations to two holiday Mah Jongs that I am giving here in Colorado - one at Thanksgiving and one at New Years. Of course, we also play Settlers of Catan and Scrabble, but we call it a Mah Jong.
When I was growing up we had an ivory and bamboo set that my mother picked up at the DC YMCA sometime in the 1930s. The adults played, and we kids played (separately) until the time came when an extra person was needed at an adult game and we were considered good enough and well behaved enough to sit in. That's how I learned bridge, too. But I had never seen a mah jong set outside of my family, or ever heard of anyone else playing it, until my middle brother got married in 1968 and his new wife had a set in a rosewood box that looked almost exactly like ours. It was startling to learn that this was not a personal in-family peculiarity, but a game that other people actually sat down and played.
I acquired my own first mah jong set from Dick Eney. He had bought it while in Asia and it had been sitting in a little zippered faux leather case in his basement for many years. Genuine plastic pieces colored lightly yellow. He gave it to me one evening when we were busily putting out an SCA principality newsletter and the subject came up in conversation. His consort of the moment told him loudly and clearly that he couldn't GIVE that to me - it might be valuable. But Dick just smiled and handed over the case, he knew and I knew that it wasn't really valuable at all - in a monetary sense - but neither of us ever told her that. I still have the pieces to that set, and play with the regularly, although the faux leather case disintegrated some time ago. Smart, sensible![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lisajulie did a bit of measuring a few years ago when she was out visiting and then found a rectangular tupperware container at a yard sale that exactly fits the set.
When I was sent out to China back in the late 1980s to teach X.25 computer configuration for my then employer, Sprint International, one of the things I wanted to do was to buy a mah jong set or two or three. After a few weeks, and with my return date drawing closer, I asked my young driver (who was also one of my students) if he knew where I could buy a mah jong set. He looked at me in astounded disbelief and then turned away in embarrassment. Well a day or two later, while driving me back to the hotel from our class at the Chaing Kai Shek Institute of Science and Technology (euphemism for military site) he stopped at a big Japanese department store in the heart of Taipei, double parked the car, and took me quickly up to the sixth floor where I was presented with a very new, very expensive Japanese mah jong set to purchase. I could do nothing except pull out my AMEX. The young man was so proud of himself for having accommodated the odd American without having to descend to anything as unsavory and backward as a market stall. The set cost half again as much as most I had seen in the US. But luckily for me, one of my two female students (they made tea and served tea for everyone before class and at breaks, and went to fetch the boxed lunches mid day) agreed to take me shopping the last weekend before I left. Rather than the modern malls and department stores, she took me to an old-fashioned market. We ate all sorts of odd and probably unwholesome goodies, and when I told her I wanted a mah jong set and didn't know where to buy one, she was a little surprised, but showed me that almost every merchant stall in the market - no matter what kind of wares it sold - had two or three sets under the counter. They were nice, sturdy plastic, in a variety of colors and carrying cases, and cost about $5 US apiece. I bought as many as I could feasibly carry and took them home as gifts.
When I was growing up we had an ivory and bamboo set that my mother picked up at the DC YMCA sometime in the 1930s. The adults played, and we kids played (separately) until the time came when an extra person was needed at an adult game and we were considered good enough and well behaved enough to sit in. That's how I learned bridge, too. But I had never seen a mah jong set outside of my family, or ever heard of anyone else playing it, until my middle brother got married in 1968 and his new wife had a set in a rosewood box that looked almost exactly like ours. It was startling to learn that this was not a personal in-family peculiarity, but a game that other people actually sat down and played.
I acquired my own first mah jong set from Dick Eney. He had bought it while in Asia and it had been sitting in a little zippered faux leather case in his basement for many years. Genuine plastic pieces colored lightly yellow. He gave it to me one evening when we were busily putting out an SCA principality newsletter and the subject came up in conversation. His consort of the moment told him loudly and clearly that he couldn't GIVE that to me - it might be valuable. But Dick just smiled and handed over the case, he knew and I knew that it wasn't really valuable at all - in a monetary sense - but neither of us ever told her that. I still have the pieces to that set, and play with the regularly, although the faux leather case disintegrated some time ago. Smart, sensible
lisajulie did a bit of measuring a few years ago when she was out visiting and then found a rectangular tupperware container at a yard sale that exactly fits the set. When I was sent out to China back in the late 1980s to teach X.25 computer configuration for my then employer, Sprint International, one of the things I wanted to do was to buy a mah jong set or two or three. After a few weeks, and with my return date drawing closer, I asked my young driver (who was also one of my students) if he knew where I could buy a mah jong set. He looked at me in astounded disbelief and then turned away in embarrassment. Well a day or two later, while driving me back to the hotel from our class at the Chaing Kai Shek Institute of Science and Technology (euphemism for military site) he stopped at a big Japanese department store in the heart of Taipei, double parked the car, and took me quickly up to the sixth floor where I was presented with a very new, very expensive Japanese mah jong set to purchase. I could do nothing except pull out my AMEX. The young man was so proud of himself for having accommodated the odd American without having to descend to anything as unsavory and backward as a market stall. The set cost half again as much as most I had seen in the US. But luckily for me, one of my two female students (they made tea and served tea for everyone before class and at breaks, and went to fetch the boxed lunches mid day) agreed to take me shopping the last weekend before I left. Rather than the modern malls and department stores, she took me to an old-fashioned market. We ate all sorts of odd and probably unwholesome goodies, and when I told her I wanted a mah jong set and didn't know where to buy one, she was a little surprised, but showed me that almost every merchant stall in the market - no matter what kind of wares it sold - had two or three sets under the counter. They were nice, sturdy plastic, in a variety of colors and carrying cases, and cost about $5 US apiece. I bought as many as I could feasibly carry and took them home as gifts.
