"Negotiation, strategy, cooperation."

September 2, 2018 7:04 PM

What Was Really Happening In Crazy Rich Asians Pivotal Mahjong Scene, Jeff Yang
posted by the man of twists and turns (14 comments total)

This is so cool. Thanks for sharing. I loved the scene, not knowing anything about mahjong, and this helps me understand it even more.
posted by rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto at 7:18 PM on September 2, 2018

Oh thank god. After that scene finished I knew i needed someone to explain of to me.
posted by GuyZero at 7:59 PM on September 2, 2018 [2 favorites]

Note: the URL renders the content for mobile devices. This is the non-mobile version, FWIW.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:17 PM on September 2, 2018

I play mah jongg and, except for the extra tiles in Singapore style, this is the game I play. It's a great game but it takes a really long time to play a complete game (East has to shift to each seat, and only shifts if East loses a hand). And there was only mention of points, not of money. All my sets have comes with a bunch of ivory or plastic sticks with incised dots of black or red, indicating monetary value. The last group I played with sort of fell apart a year or so ago because of job changes, shift changes, family stuff, etc. Each person's money is in a plastic bag with their name, waiting for the game to start again. I'd really like to see this film.
posted by MovableBookLady at 10:05 PM on September 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

I started learning Mahjong, but haven't seen the movie yet. I was asked by multiple friends who have seen the movie but didn't know Mahjong if the "W M tile" was the most powerful tile in the game. To which I just said "No, that's just an 8". I figured some kind of writeup was in the works, because I couldn't grasp how a whole movie hinged on a random number in the set. It had to be about context (of which I had none).
posted by Metro Gnome at 10:26 PM on September 2, 2018

I'm very much a a newbie with mahjong. I guess the pair of red dragons in her hand is her pairing with her fiancé, that seems blatant?
posted by fleacircus at 1:39 AM on September 3, 2018

As mentioned in the FPP, the number 8 has major significance in Chinese numerology. 88 resembles the ideogram for "double joy", which, not incidentally, is also a symbol for marriage.
posted by fraula at 2:01 AM on September 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Excellent. Watched with my kids so nice to have the breakdown of a game we are learning.
posted by tilde at 2:56 AM on September 3, 2018

I played a lot of mahjong when I first got a computer, and until bow I never suspected the depth of the game. Far from just a matching game, it sounds like rummy on top of bridge!
posted by wenestvedt at 3:20 AM on September 3, 2018

This article was republished in Vox. There's also a different article in Vulture on the same theme, with some different points. I particularly liked the insights into how the scene was filmed and things that changed, like originally having the two other players be comic relief.
posted by Nelson at 6:55 AM on September 3, 2018

Here's a more detailed article written by Lim Yi Sheng, a Singaporean. It expounds on the Jeff Yang piece.
posted by aielen at 8:29 AM on September 3, 2018 [5 favorites]

Wenestvedt: yeah, it's really sad that that matching game is called mah-jongg as it has nothing to do with the real game except the tile figures. There used to be a computer game of real Mah-Jongg made by Steve Jackson Games for the Mac but it got out-dated and was never fixed; I wrote Steve jackson and he confirmed they weren't going to do anything. I've been annoyed ever since.
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:41 AM on September 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

Don't skip over the link posted by aielen, it is amazing (i'm actually getting weepy again, like I did while watching the scene.)
posted by vespabelle at 9:44 AM on September 3, 2018

it sounds like rummy on top of bridge!

(cw, I'm a prating newbie).

It's solidly a rummy game. I really like it. It'd be sorta like gin played with four decks of cards. There's no cross-suit stuff; a set is three copies of the same card. Face cards aren't part of runs and aren't considered for suit either and they're dragons and winds now don't @ them. Players strive to form a winning fourteen-card hand, generally with four three-card melds and a pair: 3-3-3-3-2. You lay it down and win. There's one winner and they get points/money based purely on their hand; you generally don't see the losing hands. Also, you can only take a discard to complete a meld, which you reveal.

To cut to it, the huge wrinkle that elevates mahjong to OMG level is that not just any old hand can go out. You either need a specific "theme hand" (not an official term) that has some aspect of symmetry or completeness — some of them even break the 3-3-3-3-2 format, like seven pairs, or thirteen orphans — or you need some hard/lucky bonus aspect of the game, such as never taking a discard. Or, merely having a set of dragons.

I like getting a pair of dragons early. When you are trying to make a set from a pair you can grab the discard from any player. And when you have a set of dragons, the rest of your hand can be just a bunch of non-thematic sets and runs. Dragons + Garbage is a winning hand! You won't get a lot of points that way, but you can get a faster win. As a bad player, I am highly interested in easy low scoring wins. So when I have two dragons it's kind of a relief; that option is probably open.

So to me that's another symbolic aspect to Rachel's hand. Rachel has two dragons, but she isn't even using them. They're not a set. The third dragon would most blatantly represent Eleanor and her approval, which Rachel doesn't have. She doesn't need it, though, because she is not going for a dragons + garbage win. Even if what she has is legit and would beat Eleanor even with all that poor north wind and bamboo, Rachel doesn't consider it a winning hand, either.
posted by fleacircus at 8:40 PM on September 3, 2018 [5 favorites]