GLOBALIZATION IS AMERICANIZATION:

The rumble of shuffling mahjong tiles filled the air in Chinatowns across the United States in the 1920s. Before even seeing the game, you could hear it being played in apartment buildings, association halls, and back rooms of general stores. You might assume that most Chinese Americans were already familiar with mahjong long before the colorful, complex tile game hooked the broader American public, but the opposite is true: Before the early 20th century, mahjong was not a widespread part of Chinese culture, particularly in the regions from which most immigrants to the U.S. hailed.

Many Chinese Americans began playing the game in the 1920s, swept up in an enormous international fad. But the game fast became a fixture in their communities--a versatile pastime that, through the sounds and the language of gameplay, and through its visual presence in public places and in private homes, helped create spaces for a new, shared Chinese American experience.

Mahjong first evolved as a gambling game in the area around Shanghai in the mid-to-late 1800s. By the turn of the century, it was played mostly by men for both high and low stakes in Shanghai's courtesan halls, before it swept the Empress Dowager Cixi's Beijing court in the last years of her reign. After World War I, mahjong became popular in Shanghai's social clubs thanks to a rising class of Chinese intermediaries and the growing number of Americans who frequented these clubs. The rhythms of the game, its mix of luck and strategy, and the satisfaction of the tiles' heft and feel propelled its spread. Mahjong tables were settings for forging friendships, building community, or demonstrating power moves of posturing and strategy. A number of these players--most famously a Standard Oil representative named Joseph Park Babcock who brought mahjong to California in 1922--marketed the game in the U.S., promoting it as an exciting and "exotic" new pastime. It took off like wildfire. Soon the most elite Americans, from President and First Lady Harding to Hollywood celebrities, were playing mahjong, as were throngs of fans in Europe, Japan, Australia, elsewhere in China, and beyond. It was never only a game for the wealthy, however, as players from across the social spectrum--and across lines of gender, race, and region--embraced the game

From the 1920s until today, mahjong has captured the imagination of American Jewish players like few other games. Annelise Heinz, who teaches at the University of Oregon, is the author of "Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture." Recently, I spoke with Heinz about what mahjong has meant to Jewish communities. [...]

You cite one source that in the 1950s, some Jewish families believed that the game originated in East European shtetls and that mahjong was a Yiddish term.

People tell me that even today. In 2011, when I visited the Project Mah Jongg exhibit at New York's Museum of Jewish Heritage two elderly Jewish American men walked in; one said that mahjong was from the 'Old Country.' Some people tell me that when they were growing up, they thought that mahjong was a Yiddish word. It was part of the Jewish fabric they were surrounded with, and they weren't thinking very hard about it.

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