I play Mah-Jongg. Online. The only time I endeavored to play as part of a group, it gave me a headache. Well, the other players who were all twice my age gave me a headache. Thanks to Mad Men, Mah-Jongg is making a comeback and it’s not your grandma’s Mah-Jongg. Read what the Wall Street Journal’s Lucette Lagnado has to say about the resurgence of this centuries-old game.
Dust Off Your Old Game Table: Mah-Jongg Is Making a Comeback
Young and Hip Update a Classic for an Era Smitten With ‘Mad Men’ Chic
BROOKLYN, N.Y.—At a bar called Weather Up, a group of young women arrive, order martinis, manhattans and highballs, and prepare to make a night of it.
They aren’t here to pick up guys but to pick up tiles—the small tiles decorated with dragons or flowers or Chinese characters that come with the game they’re here to play, mah-jongg.
“We’re pretending we are old women,” said Sonia Klemperer-Johnson, a 36-year-old analyst at a health-insurance company, as she and her friends take over two tables in the back garden and begin to play.
Mah-jongg’s not just for grandma anymore.
Its return comes as Americans are experiencing a wave of early-1960s nostalgia. “Mad Men,” the cable television series about a boozy, smoky, sexy Madison Avenue in the ’60s, has viewers glued to their sets every Sunday night. Familiar board games such as Scrabble, Operation and Battleship are all the rage in some Manhattan bars.
As for mah-jongg, “It has become the cool game—there is a total buzz about it,” said Faye Scher, who eight years ago started an online business in Katy, Texas, called Where the Winds Blow, to sell mah-jongg games and gifts. Launched in her garage as a hobby, the business has expanded to a 2,400-square-foot warehouse, and sales have quadrupled in five or six years, she said. Games are priced from $80 to $975. Tiles used to be ivory or bone but now mainly are plastic.
Hasbro Inc., the toy manufacturer, says it has seen double-digit growth in its games and puzzles division, fueled in part by strong sales of classic games such as Monopoly, Scrabble and Operation.
Hasbro reported a 22% increase in world-wide revenue in its games and puzzles division in the second quarter—15% for the first half of 2010. The company doesn’t sell mah-jongg sets.
At the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, in New York, a mah-jongg exhibit is a popular attraction for busloads of visitors.
“Even as many urban men have embraced poker, young women have started to play mah-jongg again,” said Melissa Martens, curator of the exhibit. She and her colleagues—most in their twenties and thirties—play during their lunch hour. [Read the rest HERE.]
