Mahjong line2/24/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() I’d also teach lots of my friends how to play and it’s something that I miss a lot! It was such a big part of our friend group that one year, I made Mahjong cheesecake a Hong Kong/Brit and was just speaking to my friend about the Mahjong craziness coming from those American ladies. Now, though, our kids are old enough to grasp the ideas, so I am determined that by the end of lockdown (round about Lunar New Year 2021!) they will be able to play with us, and this time they won't have to worry about declaring the legality of their game!’Īndrew aka played a big role in meeting new people and developing friends at university and every Christmas, we play Mahjong with my family. Eventually though, that ended, and with many of our friends returning to Malaysia, the set was packed away to gather dust - it's no fun playing with just two. Between us, we introduced the game to the others (all non-Chinese) in the office, with Ae Mi joining us, and spent many happy hours playing it after hours. When I started my first job, there was another Chinese guy there - at the time it wasn't easy or cheap to get mahjong sets in the UK, so I convinced my parents to bring a couple of sets over, telling them they were for my friends, and keeping the extra one for myself. Even then though, growing up in Malaysia it's still everywhere, and I remember stories of the police wandering through neighbourhoods listening for the tell-tale clacking of Mahjong tiles (to be fair to my parents, most Mahjong games WERE played for money, and the police knew that there was a very good chance of squeezing people for bribes - euphemistically referring to them as red packets!). ‘I didn't really play much Mahjong until I was in my early 20s when Ae Mi properly reintroduced me to it - my parents didn't approve of Mahjong as they associated it with gambling, so my earliest memories of it were playing it illicitly with my cousins during the Lunar New Year and very loudly declaring "NOT PLAYING FOR MONEY AAH!" whenever my mother so much as looked like she was about to say something. They are both Malaysian Chinese, living in London with their two kids. Wei Chieh, and their wife, Ae Mi run Kit-Eats, delivering meal kits in London. While I didn’t and still don’t know how to play, I always found comfort whenever the noise of mahjong being played flooded the house because it signified a sense of togetherness, joy & contentment between many generations. Growing up, each visit back to my hometown during Chinese New Year would accompany with it the signature noises made from playing Mahjong. It was hard to be annoyed at her because she’s the sweetest old village lady in the world but she is ruthless on that MJ from a Chinese background on my mother’s side of the family, Mahjong (unsurprisingly) played a huge part at most family gatherings. always reminds me of Christmas when my 婆婆 would give us Christmas money then invite us to come play Mahjong and win it back from me and my uncle. We bring to you, our #MahjongMemories collection. We don’t know the future of the company, though like any instance of cultural appropriation, this sparked off joyful conversation within ESEA communities of memories, stories and anecdotes of families and friends gathering to play Mahjong. They acknowledge their ‘failure to pay proper homage to the game’s Chinese heritage and using words like ‘refresh’ were hurtful to many’, though we’re yet to see any accountability or real action. The company were seen to have archived posts spotlighting the (non-ESEA) founders and its (non-ESEA) members, taken down their website and have since released a statement on their page claiming that they launched the company with ‘pure intentions and a shared love for the game of American Mahjong which carries rich history here in the United States’. ![]()
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