THE NEXT BIG THING?

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. The ancient game of Mah-jongg gained widespread popularity in the 1950s and 60s. Now it's making a comeback. (More after the break)

WSJ's Lucette Lagnado reports. 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. New York's trendy neighborhoods are a center of interest in the game, but Ruth Unger, president of the National Mah Jongg League, said she's getting new members from around the country. "We lost a generation," the 84-year-old Ms. Unger said. Now, membership in her nonprofit organization is up to about 400,000 members, she said, from 100,000 in the dark days of the 1970s and early '80s. "We have members in small hamlets across the country—South Dakota, you name it." In Scottsdale, Ariz., Devin Geser, 29, a tax analyst, has corralled her friends—including a school psychologist and a health-insurance broker—to learn mah-jongg. American mah-jongg is different from its Chinese progenitor.
Both sometimes involve betting. Typically there are four players, who accumulate tiles. The object is to create a winning hand. "We joke that by the time we are old enough to go on mah-jongg cruises, we'll clean up because we started young," she said. Friends, boyfriends and husbands tease them mercilessly. Ms. Geser said that last weekend, a gentleman friend remarked, "Are you an 83-year-old woman from Miami?" Enthusiasm for mah-jongg has waxed and waned over the past century. The game was popular in the 1920s, then again in the 1950s and early '60s, when middle-class Caucasian women hosted mah-jongg evenings, decorating their homes with lanterns and dressing up in Chinese-style clothing. But as more and more women joined the work force in the 1970s, many no longer had time to play mah-jongg for hours at a stretch. Modern mah-jongg mavens play in parks, at wine bars, in cafés and on the Internet. The National Mah Jongg League hosts an online version of the game you can play day or night, while other sites offer the chance to find partners in your area to play with. But for many players, the game is still best played the old-fashioned way—seated around a table with three friends and a stiff drink. Jennifer Raznick, a 30-year-old Spanish teacher at the Professional Children's School in Manhattan, hosts games in her 27th floor apartment in Union Square, which has sweeping views. She typically serves sushi and white wine to her mah-jongg group—mostly friends who met at Emory University in Atlanta, graduated in 2002, and were reunited in Manhattan. "It started out as a joke; we were embarrassed to say we were playing mah-jongg," said Ms. Raznick. "For 27-year-old girls, that is not what we are supposed to do." Some in her group said that colleagues do a double-take when they hear about their love for mah-jongg. Ms. Raznick loves playing with her grandmother Zenia Singer. Mrs. Singer, 83, is also thrilled: Most of the women in her mah-jongg group are in their 80s and 90s. But there are those in the generation that "skipped" mah-jongg who cast a cold eye on the new fashion—especially when it hits home. Helene Steinberg, 57, came of age in the late '60s and early '70s. She went to college and graduate school and became a pharmacist. She calls mah-jongg a superficial, frivolous game, and was a bit taken aback to hear her own 29-year-old daughter, Amy, had taken it up. "I was like, 'Are you sure that is what you want to do?"' she said. Amy Abolafia, her daughter, said she is sure. She went to college and has a career: She works at Haverford College near Philadelphia in the communications department. But unlike her mother, she can't get enough of mah-jongg. "Why not enjoy this now?" said Ms. Abolafia. "My mindset is, why wait until I am an old lady to play?