Mahjong Tiles Explained: Suits, Honors, Flowers, Jokers

There are seven kinds of tile in an American mahjong set. Three suits, two honors, the flowers, and the jokers. They have not changed materially in a hundred years, and the engravings on the best sets are still drawn by the same families in Hong Kong and Guangdong who drew them in the 1930s.

The three suits

Bamboos (Bams)

Numbered one through nine, four copies each — 36 tiles. The one-bam is traditionally drawn as a small bird, often a sparrow, because mahjong itself means 'sparrow' in some dialects. The other bams are drawn as stalks.

Dots (Circles)

Numbered one through nine, four copies each — 36 tiles. Each tile carries that number of carved circles, originally meant to represent strings of coins.

Characters (Craks)

Numbered one through nine, four copies each — 36 tiles. The Chinese character on each is wàn (萬), meaning 'ten thousand'. The numeral above tells you how many ten thousands.

The honors

Winds

Four winds — East, South, West, North — four copies each. 16 tiles. The winds rotate with the dealer through a full game.

Dragons

Three dragons — Red, Green, White — four copies each. 12 tiles. In American play each dragon is paired with a suit: Red with Craks, Green with Bams, White with Dots.

Flowers

Eight flower tiles — usually two sets of four — depicting seasons, blossoms, or scenes from gardens and courtyards. In American mahjong, flowers are played in-group as part of the hand. In Chinese mahjong, they are often set aside and counted at scoring.

Jokers

Eight jokers, an American invention. They substitute in pungs, kongs, and quints — never in pairs. They can be redeemed off another player's exposure for the natural tile.

152 tiles, three suits, two honors, the flowers, and the jokers. The whole game lives in this drawer.