Origin Stories, Episode 2

It is generally agreed amongst experts that Ma Jiang (Mah Jong) or Ma Que evolved from earlier dice, card and tile gambling games as a mosaic, preserving, expanding and removing elements as it went.

In Zhejiang the games’ origin has been linked to an imperial grain store located in Taicang. The grain store was plagued by bird infestations that decimated the stock every year. To encourage workers to protect the grain, the Grain Administrator kept a tally of the number of finches caught on a bamboo board and developed a reward system. Tokens were engraved with symbols and numbers to represent the birds caught and the grain protected. These tokens could be collected and exchanged for cash rewards.

According to this story, the three suits represent a cross-section of the barrel of a gun (circles), strings of birds killed (strings of cash or bamboo) and the reward unit (wan or characters), that is 10,000. The winds are important when firing gunpowder in a gun, so the directions are also represented. The ‘dragons’ then, represent a successful shot (red centre), a missed shot (white blank) and the reward that is made (green fa).The play can also be related to the process of catching the birds: Peng (pung) being the sound of gunfire, Chi (making a sequence run) eating the dead birds, and Hu (to win) a homophonic reference to a hawk who catches birds (Hu Gu).

Another romantic creation story that remains unsubstantiated.