Meet the Tiles

A full Hong Kong set is 144 tiles: 108 suit tiles, 28 honors, and 8 flowers. That sounds like a lot until you realize it’s just a few families of tiles, each with a personality you will come to know intimately — the way you know which cousin will start drama at Thanksgiving.

The three suits (108 tiles)

Each suit runs 1 through 9, and there are four copies of every tile. Four copies is the number to tattoo on your brain: it’s why triplets are possible, why four-of-a-kinds are special, and why waiting on a tile that’s already been discarded three times is a rookie tragedy we’ve all lived through.

Dots · 筒 tung

Circles. Coins, technically — the old-money suit. Easy to read at a glance, beloved by beginners, no notes.

Bamboo · 條 tiu

Sticks. Strings of coins, if we’re being historical about it. Count the sticks, get the number. Except —

Characters · 萬 maan

The literacy check. Each tile is a number written in Chinese over the character 萬maan, meaning ten thousand — so the 5 of characters is literally “50,000.”

If you didn’t go to Chinese school, or went and retained only trauma, here’s your crash course: 一yat, 二yi, 三saam, 四sei, 五ng, 六luk, 七chat, 八baat, 九gau. You’ll have them memorized in two games, we promise. Losing money is a phenomenal mnemonic.

The honors (28 tiles)

Honor tiles have no numbers and form no runs. They only work as triplets, kongs, or eyes.

The four winds

Winds matter twice: each seat has a wind, and each round has a wind. Chapter 3 covers both. A pong of your own seat’s wind or the round’s wind scores extra. A pong of a random wind scores nothing and takes up real estate — the decorative throw pillow of mahjong hands.

The three dragons

• 中zung — the red dragon. Big red character, big main-character energy.
• 發faat — the green dragon, as in 發財faat coi. The tile equivalent of a lucky red envelope.
• The white dragon — a frame around nothing. Represents purity, or a blank check, or the void.

Any pong of any dragon scores a bonus. Collect all three and you’ve made one of the most feared hands in the game. People will tell this story about you.

The flowers (8 tiles)

Flowers don’t go in your hand. When you draw one, you set it aside face-up, draw a replacement tile from the back of the wall, and collect bonus points at the end if you win: one for each flower whose number matches your seat, one for holding all four of a set — all seasons, or all plants; on our tiles you can tell the sets apart by the color of the little corner numbers — and one for having no flowers at all.

The tile-count cheat table

Now you know every tile in the box. Time to build a wall and deal a hand — which is a lot more ceremonial than it sounds, and the ceremony is the point.