History is repeating itself
In February 2021, historian Annelise Heinz wrote an open letter to the mahjong community in the wake of the Mahjong Linecontroversy. Fast forward to March 2026, and a similar spotlight has been put on the company Oh My Mahjong. Re-reading Heinz’s letter today has helped put words to some of the spiraling thoughts and feelings that have been surfacing for me over the past few months. As the growth of mahjong continues full steam ahead, the discussion of mahjong in relation to cultural appreciation versus appropriation is also evolving. I find historical context grounding, and so I’m thankful to Professor Heinz for granting me permission to republish her letter in full.
Just as this feels like an echo of 2021, the current “mahjong trend” is eerily similar to how it looked in the 1920s (100 years ago!), which is also described below. I’m motivated to keep writing mahjong’s future alongside so many incredible Asian diasporic organizers, cultural producers and friends.
An Open Letter to the Mahjong Community
Annelise Heinz
(February 2021)
I did not expect 2021 to begin with a cultural controversy over mahjong, but as a historian of the game, I can also see how forgotten histories fueled a perfect storm. I’m a professor of history at the University of Oregon, and I’ve been researching the story of mahjong in the United States for a dozen years. My book on the subject, Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture, which began as my doctoral dissertation at Stanford University, is coming out May 2021 with Oxford University Press. One of the things that has stood out for me is how the game has repeatedly brought people together– and how, as the game has evolved, it has also created new boundaries.
For those who haven’t heard, in the fall of 2020, three white women launched the Mahjong Line, a company that advertised redesigned sets to play American mahjong; some of their sets also removed Chinese references from the tiles. The language they used to roll it out – both on their website and Instagram-based marketing campaign – combined with their tile revamp, sparked outrage across Twitter, particularly among Asian Americans, who denounced the company for cultural appropriation.
Over the ensuing weeks and ongoing coverage, I’ve noticed that, for the most part, people who find the company offensive and people who do not are talking across each other, with persistent gaps in understanding. You might have felt that, too! I hope that the histories I introduce here and talk about in my book can provide a bridge between divergent perspectives. I also know that some of these conversations are difficult and disorienting. The history of mahjong in the United States is characterized by both cultural exchange and evolution, as well as appropriation and erasure.
Here are the basic outlines of the issue: the Mahjong Line Company made serious errors in judgment rooted in a lack of knowledge about Asian Americans’ experiences both with the game and with a history of racism that the company’s language echoed. Some of the shock and horror that greeted them, however, was informed by their critics’ lack of awareness of the game’s unique American history, or that something called American mahjong even existed.
I’m first going to try to break down what I see as the heart of the matter, which is actually about the history of race and racism in our society – not for the purposes of specifically critiquing the Mahjong Line, but rather to try to explain the sources of the outrage and use this example to reflect on issues in American culture more generally and the history of mahjong specifically.
Although I do not subscribe to an idea of cultural ownership that prevents exchange and adaptation, it is not enough to simply point out that people adapt culture all the time. We also need to consider power dynamics in cultural exchanges and who has profited from inequities, especially when they’re commercialized.
I’ve heard many people in the American mahjong community asking questions like: what was so upsetting about this company? One key point is to separate the marketing from the sets themselves. The Mahjong Line Company triggered this stormy response when their marketing campaign echoed persistent and painful experiences widely shared by Asian Americans. Over the last century and a half, “mainstream” white American culture has frequently depicted East Asian people and cultures as indistinguishable and interchangeable. The language on the company’s website stated that traditional tiles were “all the same,” which reinforced a superficial sense of homogeneity. In addition, the stereotype goes, Chinese or “Eastern” cultures are tradition-bound and static, and are therefore of limited value. In contrast, the assumption is that “the West” is poised to modernize, individuate, and improve upon commodified forms of these cultures. The company reflected this posture with language on their website. These historical beliefs about Asian people matter: they were not only sources of unfortunate prejudice, they had material and lasting consequences that shaped immigration policies and exclusion from naturalized citizenship for decades.
Deep-seated stereotypes have persisted in more subtle ways. So, while outside observers may have felt the response to the Mahjong Line was outsized and out of the blue, for many Asian Americans, the company’s affront felt both raw and recurring. Recent years have seen a string of high-profile examples that continued to push on these pain points, including the erasure of Asian characters in rewritten scripts for Hollywood films in order to cast white actors, as well as white restauranteurs denigrating Chinese American food as “icky” while marketing their own “clean” version. The Mahjong Line founders acted out of ignorance and not malice – and it’s important to distinguish the two – but things done without intention do not negate the impact – particularly for anyone striving to build on and profit from a related cultural product.
Though most people don’t know it, the anti-Asian racism that was commonplace in American culture was also a foundational part of the game’s introduction to the United States in the 1920s. At the time, outright racism was widely accepted and considered an everyday part of American culture and humor. When businesses like Joseph Babcock’s Mah-Jongg Sales Company and his competitors sought to create a market for the game, they did so by exaggerating exoticism and highly stereotyped aspects of Chinese culture to create excitement. It worked. White Americans ironically embraced a Chinese game while still rejecting Chinese people. The fad hit its peak at the same moment that nativism and anti-Asian immigration policies were also at their strongest.
Mahjong culture was rife with explicitly racist humor: the chorus of the 1924 hit song “Since Ma Is Playing Mah Jong” broadcasts a particularly horrifying example that celebrates the killing of Chinese people. The proprietor of the Pung Chow Company, L.L. Harr, launched a national advertising campaign that asserted that contemporary Chinese and Chinese Americans merely played a degraded version of the “true” game that he manufactured and sold. Meanwhile, media coverage widely portrayed Joseph Babcock as the “bright” American who successfully modernized a supposedly ancient game; Babcock even briefly claimed that he invented the game himself. Even at the time, their claims enraged Chinese Americans like USC student Eleanor Chan who spoke out in newspapers against being pushed out of the game’s history by Babcock, or belittled by Harr.
I hope that one outcome of this controversy is to provide an opportunity for American mahjong players to build awareness of how the American culture that embraced the game has also perpetuated stereotypes. Exotic misrepresentations of Chinese culture no longer drive the popularity of mahjong among white Americans, but it is important to be aware of and work against the persistent caricatures of Chinese culture that show up occasionally in “Chinese-y” fonts and accoutrement like Joker stickers that mix portrayals of Asian women in an Asian-ish pastiche.
There is more to understand: the evolution of American versions of the game provides essential context to understand some of the Mahjong Line Company’s choices. Knowing the history of mahjong does not carry the same moral responsibility as understanding the history of racism. Understanding both histories, however, are essential to understanding this conflict. Virtually none of the recent media coverage has included any explanation of the American history of the game and has therefore missed a crucial part of the story.
Multiple American forms of mahjong emerged over the twentieth century, after it first gained extraordinary levels of popularity in an enormous national fad of the 1920s. Over the ensuing decades, Air Force officers’ wives created the Wright-Patterson game, which is still played on Air Force bases around the world. The most influential adaptation by far was driven by the National Mah Jongg League based in New York. Eventually hundreds of thousands of players, mostly but not exclusively Jewish American women, played their “National” version of the international Chinese game. The League’s game is what is popularly known today as “American” mahjong.
The National Mah Jongg League took a shared reference point from mahjong’s American past and transformed it into something new. When the League codified the first uniquely American style of play in the 1930s, it marked the cultural and physical Americanization of the game– a process that continued through the following decades as American mahjong became increasingly differentiated in rule and form. By the 1960s, their repeated changes had transformed the game enough that it required a different set of tiles that included Jokers. Overall, however, the tiles shared the same increasingly standardized Chinese-originated designs that kept it a recognizable form of mahjong.
Jewish American women in particular forged American mahjong culture. Mahjong became a touchstone for many who grew up in middle-class Jewish culture, along with tile racks, coin purses, snacks, and slang. As a result, American mahjong also nurtures feelings of belonging associated with the game and memories that span generations, especially among Jewish Americans. I’ve interviewed dozens of people who described the profound place mahjong has played in their and their mothers’ or grandmothers’ lives. Inherited sets are a powerful way to connect with loved ones who have passed away.
The game itself allows for adaptability, which has both made it a dynamic and long-lasting culture presence as well as left it open to changes and evolution that some might find upsetting. These are traditions that provide context for the Mahjong Line’s set designs. Because a wide range of people can play and adapt the game, the game has remained significant both as a form of entertainment and as a cultural touchstone for many different cultural groups.
Which brings us back to the tiles themselves. Mahjong is a game of the senses. One of the things that has connected mahjong players in a shared experience is a deep and abiding love of the tiles and all the sensory delights that come with them. Nothing else mimics the clatter of mahjong tiles running over each other, or the smooth cool weight of a tile in hand. Regardless of when and where the game is played, or by whom, these experiences remain. These aspects of the game are part of what makes mahjong unique and are no small part of its boundary-crossing appeal.
For many Asian American players, growing up with their families’ and communities’ games of mahjong created a strong sense of belonging and heritage. These ties were made stronger in part by the Chinese writing and symbolic resonances of the tiles. Seeing the tiles transformed, some of which were in sets that were stripped of these visual connections, thus felt like a trespass. When the Mahjong Line rolled out their new tiles with a deeply problematic marketing campaign, the feeling of cultural erasure compounded.
Unfortunately, one very frequent refrain of criticism simply proclaimed a dislike of the new tiles as “ugly” or expensive. That line of argument distracted from the more important social issues that the conflict reveals. If the concern is presented as purely a matter of personal aesthetics, it is fair for someone else to respond in kind and dismiss this complaint. After all, no one has to buy the Mahjong Line’s sets – but that is not actually the point. Being clear and informed in criticisms enables a genuine dialogue that gets to the heart of the matter.
Others have argued that the tile designs should not change at all. For them, it may be illuminating to understand that the exact tile designs have in fact dynamically changed over time. The images we know today most likely originated in the 1800s as references to money – what is now “bamboo,” for example, began as strings of coins. In the early twentieth century, tile carvers in China created a vast array of different images on the “flower” tiles especially – from scenes of Chinese operas to streetscapes of modern cigarette-smoking women in the 1930s. Some sets featured political messages rallying Chinese players against Japanese imperialism, while others incorporated advertising slogans. In more recent decades, companies across Asia have played with set designs as well, including a new set that celebrates aspects of Taiwan’s culture. Nearly 40 variants of mahjong have evolved around the world and some also incorporate additional tiles, not unlike the American sets’ Jokers. The tiles have never been static.
Removing Chinese markers altogether is a more dramatic change. Even here the Mahjong Line Company is not unique – others predate them – but across the board it is an unusual step. Without Chinese images, a mahjong set becomes unrecognizable as mahjong. Notably, American companies are not the only ones to have removed Chinese references: the discontinued Sanrio “Funbox” set featured Hello Kitty and teddy-bear faces in place of dots and bamboo and erased Chinese characters in favor of numerals. One of the redesigned Mahjong Line sets organizes its “bamboo” suit not around bamboo and the Chinese-rooted cultural symbolism it has developed over time. Instead, their set references American mahjong culture with a focus on the nickname “bam” – displayed in loops and circles instead of the traditional straight bamboo lines – and puns the tiles known as “flowers” with bags of flour. Another set designed by photographer Robert Trachtenberg and illustrator Tom Bachtell, manufactured by the American games company Crisloid, takes similar inspiration in its redesign. The “dot” tiles have been reimagined as circles on a woman’s dress with mid-century flair. Chinese words and numbers have been removed. Notably, the “Trach/Bach” set did not create a social media advertising campaign and has generally escaped notice from critics. Observers may still object to these changes, but the Mahjong Line was neither the first nor the only company to make them.
If the game evolves so far from its origins that it is no longer recognizable, it begs the question: is this still mahjong? For me, the fact that mahjong contains incredible diversity and the tiles can connect across cultural divides is profoundly beautiful. So, when I see sets change to the point that the American game no longer evokes its shared Chinese origins, nor can it be a bridge to the other forms of mahjong around the world, it breaks my heart a little – even though the new sets can be great on their own terms. When something is fully different, it’s a new start but it’s also a loss. How you view these changes might depend on who you are and the experiences you bring to it, and whether or not distancing the American game from its Chinese origins feels threatening. As various forms of mahjong become more popular in the U.S., we’re likely to continue having these conversations – and it all connects to history, whether we know it or not.
Annelise Heinz is a professor of history at the University of Oregon, and the author of Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture.