About
When it comes to mahjong,
house rules apply.
Over the past few years, I have been documenting my family’s rules, etiquette and traditions around how we play the game. And it’s not just so I can share and play the game with others, but as a means for preserving my Chinese New Zealand family history and cultural legacy.
Read more about the origin story of The Mahjong Project.
About Me
I’m Nicole. I’m a writer and audio producer based in Oakland. My parents immigrated from New Zealand in the 1980s to Santa Monica, California. About five years ago, while cleaning out their garage, they rediscovered the mahjong table they’d brought over with them along with a few extra sets of tiles. I started working on The Mahjong Project in 2019 - part instructional guide, part oral history project, to document my family’s house rules for playing, while also seeking to place the way we play in the broader history and diaspora of the game itself.
An Invitation
It’s not an exaggeration to say that millions of people are better than me at mahjong. I’m just a person who decided to take the time to document the specific way my family plays (because trying to learn anything as an adult is really hard) and to share my personal memories of the people who taught me. And also, to convey the joy it is to play a game with a crazy amount of rules!
Along the way, I’ve found that talking about mahjong is a special way to open up conversation with people about their families and traditions. If you have a special house rule, superstition or simply a memory of the mahjong expert in your family, I would love to hear it.
Press
“How to Interview Your Family Members Like an Oral Historian” (KQED, June 2025)
“How learning to play mahjong helped a Chinese-American connect more deeply to her roots” (South China Morning Post, May 2025)
“Mahjong, My Grandparents, and Me” (Vogue, May 2025)
“Writer Nicole Wong says mahjong — and all its rules — helped her make sense of her own family” (KJZZ’s The Show radio interview, May 2025)
“Nicole Wong’s Advice for New Mahjong Players” (Mochi magazine, May 2025)
Book Review of Mahjong in Publisher’s Weekly (April 2025)
Book Riot Best New Book Release (April 2025)
“Mahjong’s Cultural Legacy: Author Nicole Wong on House Rules & Tradition” (InfatuAsian podcast, March 2025)
“Recognizing One’s Heritage Through a Game with Nicole Wong” (Tomatokind magazine, Feb 2024)
“Where You’re REALLY From with Nicole Wong” (Voices on the Side podcast, June 2023)
creative collaborators.
I worked with some incredibly talented people to make this site look as good as it does. Without them, this would all have just remained a long Google Doc titled “Manuscript” in a personal folder called “Mahjong Project.”