Mahjong tiles


Mahjong tiles are tiles of Chinese origin that are used to play mahjong as well as mahjong solitaire and other games. Although they are most commonly tiles, they may refer to playing cards with similar contents as well.

Development

The earliest surviving mahjong sets date to the 1870s when the game was largely confined to Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Jiangsu. They already exhibited various traits found in modern sets. The core of the set is the 108 suited tiles which were inherited from Chinese money-suited playing cards. The Wind honor tiles and the Four Seasons tiles were also found in the earliest sets. The honor tiles known as Arrows developed to their current form by 1890 concurrent with a new style of play called Zhōngfā. Flower tiles, once known as Outer Flowers, were not universally accepted until the 1920s. In contrast, many early sets contained wild cards with specific powers known as Inner Flowers which disappeared from most of China but are still found in Vietnam and Thailand.

Contents

A set of Mahjong tiles will usually differ from place to place. It usually has at least 136 tiles, most commonly 144, although sets originating from the United States or Southeast Asia will usually feature more Tiles in the form of flowers or [|Jokers]. Some sets also contain blank tiles which owners can use to replace damaged or missing tiles.
Mahjong tiles can be organized into several categories:

Suited tiles

Suited tiles have a suit and a rank. There are three money-based suits with ranks ranging from one to nine. There are four tiles of each rank and suit combination, thus there are 36 tiles in a suit, and 108 suited tiles in total. To refer to a suited tile, the rank is named, followed by the suit. The ones and nines of each suit are collectively referred to as the terminal tiles. Suited tiles may be used to form melds.

Circles

The circle suit is represented by a series of circles.
The 1 Circle is generally a large circle of multiple colors, while the rest of the circle tiles consist of smaller circles, each circle being of one color. The 2 Circle consists of a green and a blue circle, the 3 consisting of one green, one red, and one blue circle arranged diagonally. The 4 Circle has two blue circles and two green circles, arranged in a rectangle with circles of like color in opposite corners. The 5 Circle is similar to the 4 Circle, with another circle in the middle. The 6 Circle consists of two green circles at the top and four red circles in the bottom. The 7 Circle is similar to the 6 Circle, but has 3 green circles arranged diagonally from top-left to bottom-right. The 8 Circle has eight blue circles arranged in a 2x4 rectangle. The 9 Circle has three each of green, red, and blue circles, with each color occupying a row. There is some space between each row, and the middle row is always of the red circles.
Because of the large size of the circle in the 1 Circle, it is commonly nicknamed da bing.
From the monetary origin of this suit, the circles represent the copper coins known in English as "cash"..

Bamboo

The bamboo suit, with the exception of the 1 Bamboo, which is commonly represented by a bird, is represented by outlines of sticks.
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The 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8 Bamboo are represented entirely out of green sticks only or blue and green sticks, while the middle stick in the 5 Bamboo, the top stick of the 7 Bamboo, and the sticks along the center column of the 9 Bamboo are red. Some sets may also have the sticks along the bottom row or center column of the 7 Bamboo in blue. The 8 Bamboo has its sticks forming an M-shape and its mirror image.
From the monetary origin of this suit, the sticks are actually rope strings that tie 100 Chinese copper coins together by the square holes in the middle. The repeated bumps in the sticks depict the individual coins in the strings, but they were mistaken by Joseph Park Babcock as the knots on the bamboo plants, hence the English name of the suit. The 1 Bamboo, as it commonly depicts a bird, is often referred as the sparrow ; in Japan it is most commonly a peacock. In early sets, there was no bird but a single bent string of cash capped with a red knot.

Characters

The character suit is represented by Chinese characters.
The rank of the tile is represented at the top, in blue, with Chinese numerals, while the character below is in red. Older sets used the simplified character 万 when tiles were still hand-carved. Fujianese sets use 品. Most sets use the character 伍 for five instead of 五.
From the monetary origin of this suit, the myriads are actually 100 strings of coins described in the bamboo suit section above. One myriad equals ten thousand coins or 100 strings of 100 coins.

Red tiles

Red tiles are unique to the Japanese set. They appear as a red version of tiles from each suit and are not quadruplicated. They first appeared in the 1970s with the Red 5 Circle which were followed with red 5 tiles for the other suits. Red 3s and 7s later appeared and were followed by red 1s and 9s although they are much less commonly found in sets than red 5s. There is also a rare red white dragon which can act as a wild card if tsumo conditions are met.
These tiles are entirely optional. When inserted into play, one copy of its regular non-red counterpart is removed. They increase the score when melded. Japanese sets typically do not include the Four Gentlemen flower tiles to make room for the red tiles as flower tiles are rarely used in Japanese Mahjong anyway. Some mahjong parlours will have their own house tiles which may be red tiles for even ranks, even higher-scoring green or gold tiles, or colored wind tiles.

Honor tiles

Honor tiles have neither rank nor suit but like suited tiles they are also formed into melds. They are divided into two categories: four Wind tiles and three Dragon tiles, each of which is quadruplicated. Thus, there are 16 wind tiles and 12 Dragon tiles for 28 honor tiles.

Winds

The four types of Wind tiles are: East, South, West, and North. Their Chinese characters are usually in blue, like 東, 南, 西 and 北.
Each type of Wind tiles corresponds to a point along the compass, written in blue traditional Chinese characters. Bonus points are scored if melds match the seat wind or prevailing wind or both. They are also known as the Four Joyous Tiles.

Dragons

The three types of Dragon tiles are:
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The Chinese name for the Dragon tiles means "three fundamental tiles". They are also known as the arrow tiles. The English name was an invention by Babcock. They are like wind tiles except melding them will always score bonus points regardless of the prevailing or seat wind. These tiles were invented after the wind tiles beginning with the whites which were developed from replacement tiles, followed by the reds circa 1870, and finally the greens which entered the set by 1890.

Flower tiles

Flower tiles are not used in melds. When drawn, they are set aside and the player gets to draw again but from the dead wall. These tiles usually depict stylized representations of flowers in many colors. Nevertheless, other non-floral themes also exist, which vary from set to set. In American Mahjong, they are treated as honor tiles but from the 1930s to 1960 they were considered jokers. Some Japanese players treat them as higher scoring honors that cannot be used to form 'eyes'.

Quartets

The average set, if it contains flower tiles, will have two quartets of flower tiles, differentiating the color and/or style of the labels. Each quartet contains four unique tiles, which are numbered from 1 to 4 or otherwise distinctly labelled. Each number matches a seat. Winners can double their score if the number on their flowers matches their seat number. There are also bonuses from collecting an entire quartet and in some variations, immediately winning from collecting all the flowers. As they reward points for pure luck, many games do not include them or are considered optional.
The four tiles in the Four Seasons quartet are:
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  1. Spring
  2. Summer
  3. Autumn
  4. Winter
The four tiles in the Four Gentlemen quartet are:
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  1. plum
  2. orchid
  3. chrysanthemum
  4. bamboo
Thai, Vietnamese, and Malaysian mahjong sets contain two more quartets of flower tiles in addition to the Four Seasons and Four Gentlemen. These are the usual subjects:
While some Vietnamese sets use the Four Arts and the Four Noble Professions, most of them use emperors and empresses. They are not decorated with pictures but just the number and character.
The earliest known Chinese sets contained twelve flowers but no Four Gentlemen tiles and the Four Seasons were unadorned. Sets with large numbers of flowers were once popular in Northern China to play the game of "Flower Mahjong". They typically had 20 or more flowers with some described as having up to 44.

Animal tiles

Animal tiles are unnumbered flowers that automatically match the player's seat. These tiles are found in pairs with their subjects usually based on popular Chinese fables. Immediate payment occurs if both tiles in a pair or all the animals are collected. Singaporean sets contain two pairs of animal tiles while Thai and four-player Malaysian sets have four pairs. Some examples of tile pairs include:
Three-player Malaysian sets have two pairs of animals accompanied with a quartet of identical animal tiles decorated with a face, usually that of a clown. These are known as heads, faces, clowns or snowmen. Sometimes, these four heads will be replaced with two pairs of male heads and female heads.
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Joker tiles

Joker tiles can be used to replace any suited or honor tile in putting together a hand subject to local restrictions. Four jokers are sometimes used in certain variants of Southeast Asian and Chinese mahjong, including Shanghainese mahjong. American mahjong uses eight jokers.

General-purpose

All-purpose jokers may have these inscriptions: 百搭, 聽用, 飛, or simply "Joker" in American sets.
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Suit-restricted

Vietnamese and Thai mahjong are related to extinct Chinese variants which used specialized jokers such as "King Mahjong". Vietnamese mahjong sets commonly contain eight unique jokers:
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The first four jokers have a long lineage. They are found in the earliest sets and were inspired by the suit-restricted jokers in older Chinese card games. After 1975, modern Vietnamese sets triplicated or quadruplicated all eight jokers but each copy will have a different frame which allows them to be melded with each other. This means a total of 32 jokers, 36 if the alternate honor jokers are also included.

Rank-restricted

In Hong Kong, Vietnamese style sets may also contain rank-restricted jokers, either as alternatives to the flower joker, or in addition to the usual eight:
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The Chinese characters from the latter three comes from Xiangqi pieces. These sets may have suit, dragon, wind, and rank-restricted jokers adorned with multiple characters representing the tiles they can replace, instead of a single Chinese character.

Construction

Traditionally, Mahjong tiles were made of bone, often backed with bamboo. Bone tiles are still available but most modern sets are constructed from various plastics such as bakelite, celluloid, nylon and PET. There are a small number of sets that have been made with ivory or jade, but these are exceedingly rare: most sets sold as ivory are in fact made from bone. Regardless of the material used to construct the tiles, the symbols on them are almost always engraved or pressed into the material. Some expert players can determine the face value of their tiles without actually looking at them by feeling these engravings with their fingers.
There are generally two size categories available, the larger mainland-China size and the smaller Taiwanese/Japanese/American size. However, within the former category, 4 sizes have been roughly standardized:
The length to thickness ratio in all of these must be above 1:1.5, so that the tiles can steadily stand upright, since Chinese players use no racks to support their tiles in hand during play.
The sizes within the second category have lengths that vary roughly between. However, the Japanese tiles set themselves apart within this class by virtue of their thickness, which allows them to stand upright—despite their diminutive overall size. This enables Japanese mahjong players also to dispense with the use of racks.

Unicode

Mahjong tiles were added to the Unicode Standard in April, 2008 with the release of version 5.1.
The Unicode block for mahjong tiles is U+1F000-U+1F02B: