Why this ancient Chinese board game is such a hit with Gen Z

It’s a Wednesday evening inside PS40, a stylish bar in Sydney’s CBD. While torrential rain buckets down outside, inside the air is filled with quiet chatter and a persistent clinking – not of glasses, but of mahjong tiles.

Mahjong, the game which originated in 19th century China, may have once been associated with an older cohort of players. But in cities like New York, London and here, at No Flowers Mahjong Club in Sydney, the game is gaining popularity among a new generation.

No Flowers is the brainchild of brand consultant Rose Pengelly, who is of Singaporean and Baba Nyonya descent and grew up watching her grandfather play the game, when it was strictly off limits to children.

“I’ve had a bit of taboo associated with it,” she says.

“It was something we weren’t allowed to partake in... My brother and I would just be, like, peeping through the door to see what they were doing.”

Because of this, Pengelly only learnt to play fairly recently, after she and a group of friends talked about reconnecting with their culture.

The club’s name is derived from the style of mahjong Pengelly teaches – played without the optional flowers suit (there are many different variants of mahjong).

While mahjong can be quite competitive (particularly when gambling is involved), No Flower’s ethos is more about openness and community. Pengelly roves the room offering guidance like a friendly big sister, while attendees are provided with instructional sheets to lean on throughout the game.

“It’s a great equaliser… that’s what makes it so special,” says Pengelly.

While many have come with friends, others have come alone.

“You sit down at a table with four people and it removes that awkwardness from socialising because everyone’s there to learn the same thing,” she says, likening the club to a third space (a social setting outside work or the home).

The main demographic are people in their mid-20s, many of whom like Pengelly grew up with a cultural connection to the game.

This Sunday, she will hold a joint event in Sydney with Melbourne chess club mschess.

Connection and reconnection

Growing up in Vietnam, siblings Ryan and Emily Huynh played mahjong casually, but it wasn’t until they became young adults that they started to properly learn the game.

“I wanted to find a way to hang out with my parents more, especially after dinner because, I guess, similar to a lot of families, we would go back to either the TV or a computer or smartphones,” says Ryan.

Emily, a linguistics student who is living in Ho Chi Minh City, says the game is a shortcut for catching up whenever relatives from America visit.

“Whenever they travel to Vietnam to visit us, the first thing they do is set up a mahjong table,” she says.

“It’s just such a casual way to meet up after a long time of not seeing each other, we just play the game and tell stories and it’s so chill, it’s so effortless and the conversation just flows.”

When Ryan’s partner, Annie Yang, travelled to Vietnam to meet his family, she too fell in love with the game. The couple bought their first set and started playing with friends.

“We ended up throwing our first event just for all our friend groups to get together and meet each other,” Yang says, but some people they didn’t know also showed up. “We were like, ‘oh, that’s strange’.”

The trio launched their club Lucky Tiles, first in Auckland, New Zealand, in September last year, and then in Sydney when Ryan and Yang relocated.

Bringing the game with them to Sydney was a way for them to meet new people, says Yang.

“Your friend group gets smaller and smaller as you get older. So it’s just such a good social thing to do. It’s very low effort, very easy to pick up,” she says.

Of the club’s demographic, Ryan says: “We attract a lot of young people around 25 to 35, around our age, young professionals.”

“They just want to hang out and also find mahjong is a very interesting thing they’ve seen in the media – that Crazy Rich Asians scene always comes up in conversation.”

Today, Lucky Tiles runs events across three cities – Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland. Last weekend, they took the club global by working with similar organisations across Canada and the United States to hold a global series celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival.

“It’s all about love. Everyone’s happy. Whoever wins or lose, everyone is happy... one person wins, but three others will celebrate that,” says Ryan.

Software engineer Michael Zhao runs a weekly Japanese mahjong (or Riichi mahjong) night at Marche Board Game Cafe in Melbourne’s CBD.

Zhao, originally from Sydney, started playing the game in high school. When he moved to Melbourne three years ago, he sought out local clubs as a means of making friends.

The Japanese variant of the game Zhao plays every Thursday is more complex than others, he says, and heavier on strategy – and what suits other players may have.

Some players, he says, come to the game after seeing it in Japanese comics or anime, while others are “second and third generation immigrants who come with their friends”.

Most attendees are students or working professionals aged from late teens to early 30s. Many, like Zhao, are Melbourne transplants looking for social connection.

“It’s meant to be about social connectivity… some people play super casually, they’ll barely even be playing and are mainly just talking, which is fine. And other people are super competitive, with timers and rule tracking and all that kind of stuff,” he says.

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