back in the year 1923

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or2az
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back in the year 1923

Post by or2az » Fri May 08, 2015 3:23 am

While browsing through a bookstore, I came upon this book which was published in 1923. I figured it had something to do with mahjong because of the 1-bam on the cover. I discovered that the original cantonese word for the game was ma cheuk. It was an interesting read.
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Some things that stood out:
It stated that the flower "cards" (even though they were tiles) were a supplement to the regular game and were seldom used by the Chinese, thus a set was described as having 136 cards. The symbol for the cracks (maan) were slightly different and the white dragons (baak) were blanks, no rectangular box. The other dragons looked the same as the modern japanese sets.
Pungs were separated into 2 types, a pung for an open set, and a gan for a closed set. Chee and kong were not. Self-drawn was Chee Moh (tsumo).
The scoring sticks (counters) had names. I didn't know that. Tien-sky, day-earth, yan-man, and ngom-goose. Goose??
I also had never seen the chinese names for the winning hands. Guess I never really looked. They are longer. Too many to list. (Chuen Yue Gow= Chinrōtō).
The last item I will mention was the description of 2-handed mahjong. None of the game apps I played when I first started playing were like this.
Remove 44 tiles, the 4 souths, the 4 norths, and the entire bamboo suit. That leaves 92 tiles, two walls of 23 long and 2 high.
East and West alternate without regard to the winner. No cheeing.
Not a bad book for being over 90 years old.

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Re: back in the year 1923

Post by Barticle » Fri May 08, 2015 5:48 pm

That's a nice find. Mahjong was massively popular in the 20's and several books were published then.

The appendices in The Complete Book of Mah-Jongg by A.D. Millington (from 1977) include twenty-two pages of Chinese terms which can be used to trace the roots of Japanese terminology; I quote only a handful of examples from this source in my PDF guide. Millington also has a bibliography which includes over thirty books from the 20's (including Winters).

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Re: back in the year 1923

Post by Ignatius » Fri May 08, 2015 9:54 pm

How I envy you english speakers, try to find a book about mahjong in spanish... It's almost impposible. Except for the book of xKime. And possibly one or two about chinese mahjong, if there are.
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Re: back in the year 1923

Post by Barticle » Sat May 09, 2015 1:06 am


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Re: back in the year 1923

Post by Ignatius » Sat May 09, 2015 3:23 am

Barticle wrote:Almost, but not quite, impossible!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Riichi-Mahjong- ... 497328381/

This books follows the EMA rules, but the description says that it has a section about the differences between EMA rules and the most common japanese rulesets, and a japanese-spanish glossary among other things.
Life is as beautiful as you want it to be, but it´s only one. That´s why you must not get tired of it. Don´t care if you don´t say something that seems "important" because your mere existence is important for someone.

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