Mahjong – 麻將 – má jiàng

I can’t believe Thanksgiving is right around the corner.  Ever since I met my husband, I’ve spent almost all of my Thanksgiving with his side of the family.  Mostly because he grew up celebrating Thanksgiving, and that his family would actually serve turkey and have traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  As a little kid in Hong Kong, we didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.  After moving to New York, my family celebrated Thanksgiving in Chinese style.  Chinese-Thanksgiving consist of a big dinner serving, surprise, Chinese food!  I don’t remember ever having Turkey, we would usually have chicken instead!  This is going to be a topic for another day.

There is one thing we always do as a family though, playing Mahjong, 麻將.  Whenever we have a big group of people around, we would play Mahjong.  It’s the way our family communicates with each other, over the Mahjong table.  Mahjong is very popular within the Chinese community, and it’s such a popular game that most people have played on the computer nowadays.  But I really see it as a social venue.  I grew up watching my mom play Mahjong.  So instead of going shopping with her friends, she sees her friends over the Mahjong table.  They get to talk about families, friends, news, celebrities, anything; however, it’s not always necessary to come up with topics because then you can also concentrate on playing the game too.

The Mahjong sound maybe noisy to some people, but to me, it’s one of the most endearing sound.  The sound of the tiles hitting each other, with lots of laughter and with lots of Ai-ya.