This is one of the many articles in the Mercury’s Holiday Issue 2026. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.
Some families bond over white elephant gift exchanges; others go caroling or decorate the tree. My family bonds over mahjong.
For years, I’ve been trying to induct people into the cult of mahjong. I grew up playing, and ever since I moved away from home for college, I’ve been trying to find other people to play with. I’ve volunteered to teach people left and right, but nobody took me up on the offer—until recently.
Mahjong is cool again now, and reactions upon learning about my mahjong hobby have changed from “that’s cool, I guess” to “can you teach me?” Mahjong groups have sprung up all over town, from Cantonese Social’s meetups at the CORE food pod to Adidas-backed mahjong nights at Filipino restaurant Sun Rice, complete with DJ sets. I’ve finally even found my own group to play with here in Portland, a group of food-loving, mostly Asian American women who always throw down for our Sunday afternoon potlucks.
Do you want in, too? I’ll spare you the rules, but I will teach you how to use mahjong to bring your family and friends even closer together.
They say nothing brings people together like food, and mahjong is an opportunity to show off that recipe you’ve finessed and fine-tuned. My mom will use mahjong as an excuse to buy up all the short ribs at Costco, then braise them with red wine overnight and serve them over steaming polenta. In my Portland group, hosts have made everything from broiled salmon collar to handmade black sesame milk buns. If all your players are too full after eating and need to lie down instead of playing mahjong, that’s a successful mahjong night in my book.
Or use this chance to test out newfangled grocery store snacks on a captive audience. Someone brought a handful of different flavors of Taiwan-exclusive Doritos to a game the other night, one of them being the newly released century egg, which was a hit. Set up two little bowls of snacks on opposite corners of the table and see what happens; you might even brush hands reaching into the same snack bowl.
Mahjong also makes for the perfect activity between meals. Christmas is an all-day affair in my family, starting with a massive brunch of all-you-can-eat homemade waffles and latkes in the morning, and dinner with 40-plus members of the extended family in the evening. But especially after a big meal, it’s hard to fill an entire day with conversation, and mahjong is a way to be together without always having to think of what to say.
Amping up the competitive spirit can also help bring everyone closer. Placing a small wager of $2 per person means everyone’s got a little skin in the game. When you pay out at the end of the game, be sure to use as many pennies as possible so winners walk out feeling like they’ve got a sizable chunk of change. (This is also a good way to hand off the coins you meant to take to the bank, but never did.)
Add extra incentives by creating trophies and plaques for the winners. Ever since my Paw Paw and Gung Gung (Cantonese for grandma and grandpa) passed away, we’ve held mahjong tournaments on each of their birthdays every year. Those who really want to win will visit their urns at the mausoleum, leave flowers, and pray for victory. My uncle got a trophy made that says “Tournament of Chumps” on it, and each year, the winner’s name gets added to the “Wall of Bozos” plaque along with a record of their winnings. My most recent winnings: $1.06.
My family isn’t religious, and we’re not particularly superstitious. That all goes out the window when it comes to mahjong. Gung Gung would close his eyes and rub the characters carved into the tiles to see if he could guess what they were without looking, as if doing so would give him better tiles. I’ve been training in the art of tactile tile-reading, too, and right now, I’d put my success rate at about 5 percent. Paw Paw also discovered that sometimes her fate would suddenly turn upon coming back from a bathroom break—for better or for worse. So when someone was on a winning streak, we’d start sneakily topping up their tea to try to force a change of luck.
Many attribute mahjong’s current boom in popularity to our collective desire to get off our phones and return to good old analog games. And while that works to a degree, I’m sorry to say that there’s no magic to mahjong; phones have been an intrusive presence at my family’s mahjong games since the days of phones with slide-out QWERTY keyboards. Sometimes, someone will pull out their phone in between turns, prompting a “what tile did you just throw out?,” which in turn makes everyone else take out their phones until we all collectively forget whose turn it is.
But other times, our mahjong games are interrupted by a more welcome presence. A random comment turns into a story, and everyone’s got something to add. Before you know it, no one’s thrown a tile in 10 minutes, nobody knows whose turn it is anymore, and we’ve launched into a full-on conversation that has nothing to do with mahjong. And that’s the best part of the game.
