JON GANN: Welcome to drop-in mahjong.
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
It's a weekend afternoon, and the room is packed.
GANN: I shall be taking you through the beautiful world of mahjong today.
MCCAMMON: We're at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., and Jon Gann is greeting a few dozen people of a wide range of ages who've crammed themselves around game tables for an afternoon of mahjong. Gann shepherds the newcomers, the folks gathered around the clearly labeled beginners table, through the basics of how to line up the tiles and look for patterns.
GANN: We have bamboos, or bams. We have cracks, or characters. And we have dots, or circles.
MCCAMMON: Gann says he's been seeing a surge of interest in the Chinese tile game. Roommates Grace Folk (ph) and Sophia Rosso (ph) say they just had their first lesson right here the week before.
GRACE FOLK: We're trying to find hobbies that are - get us out of the house and are not expensive, like eating out or shopping, that kind of thing.
SOPHIA ROSSO: Getting off of our phones and doing real-life things.
MCCAMMON: Typically, the game is played with four people at a square table. But on the Sunday we visit, some folks are doubled up with their friends. At the next table, Eric Harvey (ph) follows along as his friend Ellen Chin (ph) plays the game.
ERIC HARVEY: It really challenges you because every hand changes, and you have to adjust for every different thing that's going on throughout the board.
ELLEN CHIN: It builds nice community, and it's a good mix of luck with strategy.
MCCAMMON: Chin grew up watching her mother and aunts playing and was always interested. But many of the others we met said they just started playing recently. One of the organizers, David Horowitz, says it's hard to say exactly why mahjong seems to be catching on in recent years, but he has some ideas.
DAVID HOROWITZ: My thought is that the pandemic left everybody with this thirst for gathering, doing social activities, playing games.
MCCAMMON: Horowitz says people might also just need the outlet.
HOROWITZ: We're in an age right now where people are looking for joy, and this gives people a good time for a few hours - at least, does that for me. It lets me escape some of the other things that are going on and just let myself go and have fun.
ZOE THOMASON: (Laughter).
MCCAMMON: Zoe Thomason is in her 20s. She feels like mahjong was a perfect fit for her.
THOMASON: No, I definitely feel like whenever I told people I was playing mahjong, they were like, Oh, that's 'cause you're already mentally 85 years old. Like, I, like, crochet. I bake sourdough. I do all the kind of stereotypical grandma hobbies. But this feels very different. It feels social, and it's starting to feel a lot younger. Like, it feels like people 35 and under who are getting into it.
MCCAMMON: Laughing across the table from her is Claudia Tellaho (ph), who's in her early 70s. She said she first tried playing mahjong decades ago, but it didn't click for her. Then she started playing online during the pandemic.
CLAUDIA TELLAHO: And that's because it takes a while before it does click, and I don't think I gave it the time. And then as I - now I'm older, and it appealed to me. And I think it uses some sort of synapses in your brain that you don't normally use. And it becomes a little addicting. Would you all say that?
CHIN: I'm obsessed with the game.
TELLAHO: Exactly.
CHIN: For sure.
MCCAMMON: Ellen Chin agrees. And she says that addictive quality is what pushed her to recruit more friends to play the games.
CHIN: I've been hosting mahjong nights. I hosted a mahjong night at work to teach everyone there. We're going to play again next week, actually.
NICOLE WONG: Sitting and playing and eating snacks and having time to chat with friends is just really joyful.
MCCAMMON: Writer Nicole Wong grew up seeing family members gather to play and eventually learned the game from her grandparents.
WONG: My grandparents played every Sunday for, like, years and years and years. It was their one day off. They were greengrocers, and they played with the same people. And it's just something that you can really fit into, like, a tradition like that.
MCCAMMON: Wong is the author of "Mahjong: House Rules From Across The Asian Diaspora." She says she's happy to see a part of her family's Asian culture being celebrated and appealing to people from a wide variety of backgrounds now.
WONG: I got reached out to from people in other countries who - you know, just to tell me that they are learning how to play mahjong and that they're so excited to find other people in their communities to learn.
MCCAMMON: But mahjong's popularity isn't brand new. Its origins are in 19th century China, and it's been played and loved in Asian households ever since and beloved by generations of Jewish American women in the U.S. for decades as well. Wong says mahjong's broader popularity in recent years has also changed the game in ways she sometimes finds uncomfortable. Some sets have removed the Chinese characters, for example, and she's noticed that some of her friends play with different rules than her family does.
WONG: For me, personally - and I think perhaps many others, being Asian American here in this country, you know - there have been times in which I have felt like I don't belong or have felt excluded from things. And so I think just to see it in a context so far away from my own familial context was confusing.
MCCAMMON: Wong said she wanted to preserve her family's style of playing for future generations.
WONG: You know, a little bit from just, like, a personal motivation of wanting to document almost from a family history, archival sensibility, and then also because I just wanted to be able to teach friends how to play.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Whoo.
GANN: Everyone has a card.
MCCAMMON: David Horowitz and Jon Gann have been teaching friends to play informally for a long time. D.C. drop-in mahjong grew out of that over the past couple of years and keeps growing.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Whoo.
MCCAMMON: Back at the Jewish Museum in D.C., Horowitz tells us how he got his start.
HOROWITZ: I have an interesting origin story. It's a little bit long. I'll try and keep it short.
MCCAMMON: In 2001, he belonged to an LGBTQ-focused synagogue in Washington.
HOROWITZ: And a bunch of the men decided they wanted to dress up as their mothers in drag and make a float in the pride parade playing mahjong.
MCCAMMON: Horowitz was there. He didn't dress in drag himself, but he was the group's photographer that day.
HOROWITZ: I think we were the ones who were the most amused. The crowd didn't really get the joke, but what it did was launch an interest among especially some of the men in the synagogue in learning mahjong 'cause it was, you know, traditionally a women's game, and we wanted to bend the gender stereotypes there a little bit.
MCCAMMON: He's been playing ever since, and now he plays at least three times a week, including an online game that helps him stay in touch with friends from Nepal, France and India. But he loves playing in person.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: OK, now...
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: ...Remember, how many do you get?
MCCAMMON: The crowd on the day we visit is almost twice as large as Horowitz and Gann were expecting. And Gann tells us that their Tuesday evening game at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library had 130 people the week before.
GANN: It's fantastic. And more importantly, we're teaching people to play, which means we'll have more players in the future, which is why we started teaching to begin with 'cause we wanted - I wanted more people to play with.
MCCAMMON: Unlike many mahjong groups, they run these sessions for free. Gann says he's loved seeing the rising popularity of the game, at least for now.
GANN: I know that eventually this will one day wane, you know, like Trivial Pursuit or all games or whatever. But, you know, for the time being, it's fantastic, and it's a lot of fun. And I'm glad that we have been able to sort of, you know, grassroots build this community.
(SOUNDBITE OF TILES CLACKING)
MCCAMMON: All the more important at a time when connections in real life can feel fewer and farther between. Sarah McCammon, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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