The Mahjong We Call Taiwanese

There’s been a bit of a mahjong craze in Karachi lately. And if you ask players what they’re playing, the answer is usually the same:

“Taiwanese Mahjong.”

Well… sort of.

The game being played like an obsession in Karachi is definitely Taiwanese-style Mahjong. But it isn’t quite the same game as Taiwanese Mahjong as it is actually played in Taiwan.

I became curious about this when I started comparing the rules being used in Dubai with those used by the Ladies’ Recreation Club (LRC) in Hong Kong. I happened to have both scoresheets: a friend in Hong Kong and another in Dubai had each told me that they had long since abandoned the Western-style, Maloney-book way of playing Mahjong in favor of what they called Taiwanese Mahjong.

So naturally, I wanted to see just how similar these two versions actually were.

And that’s when things got interesting.

So, is it Taiwanese?

Not exactly.

The game has some very recognizably Taiwanese features. Most importantly, it is a 16-tile game, rather than the 13-tile structure used in mahjong. It also includes some hands and scoring vocabulary that you’ll find in Taiwanese Mahjong.

But the scoring system and many of the hands don’t come directly from the standard Taiwanese game.

The LRC version has its own mix of influences. The crux of its scoring, meaning how a hand’s value actually gets calculated, and which hands get treated as the big wins, are much more closely aligned with Shanghai-style Mahjong than with Taiwanese. Layered on top of that are a few specific, recognizable touches borrowed from Cantonese Mahjong: a hand or two, some of the terminology players call out at the table. And then a good deal of it was simply developed by the LRC itself.

So calling it simply “Taiwanese Mahjong” is a little misleading.

A better description would be:

Hong Kong-style Taiwanese Mahjong, a 16-tile variant developed by the Ladies’ Recreation Club in Hong Kong.

And the version now played in Karachi has come to us through Dubai.

How did we get here?

This is the part I find fascinating.

The trail seems to run something like this:

Taiwanese-style game → Hong Kong LRC → Dubai → Karachi

But it isn’t a case of someone in Taiwan creating a set of rules that travelled unchanged around the world.

The LRC developed its own version of the game and published an updated its version 5 scoresheet in September 2025. Dubai’s own rules only caught up to it nine months later, when their group revised its scoring in June 2026 to fall in line with LRC’s. Karachi players were taught the game when someone from the Dubai community came to Karachi on vacation and taught her friends.

Why did LRC bother writing its own rules?

Fair question. If Taiwanese Mahjong already existed, why didn’t the Club just teach that?

The answer, from the Club’s own scoresheet, is refreshingly unglamorous: they wanted to stop arguments.

The LRC runs regular social mahjong sessions and charity events, with members coming from all sorts of playing backgrounds. Everyone arrived with their own version of the rules, as people tend to do with mahjong. A hand worth one thing at one table could be worth something completely different at another, and scoring disputes weren’t much fun.

So the Club did something sensible. They drew on the major English-language references available to them (Amy Lo’s The Complete Book of Mah Jongg, 2001), consulted experienced players in the membership, and put together one set of rules that everyone could use.

That is really the whole story behind why this version exists at all. It wasn’t about creating a historically pure version of Taiwanese Mahjong. It was about having a game that was consistent, playable and, ideally, less likely to cause an argument. 🙂

Along the way, everyone kept calling it “Taiwanese Mahjong.”

And honestly, I can see why.

It looks Taiwanese. It has 16 tiles. Many of the familiar terms feel Taiwanese. And if someone teaches you the game as Taiwanese Mahjong, there’s not much reason to question the label.

Until you start comparing the rules.

The rabbit hole

Once I started looking at the details, I couldn’t resist going down the rabbit hole.

I compared the LRC scoresheet with descriptions of Taiwanese, Shanghai, and Cantonese Mahjong. What emerged was not a clean family tree, but a rather entertaining mixture.

There are genuine Taiwanese elements.

The core scoring logic, and quite a few of the “big” hands, trace much more convincingly to Shanghai Mahjong.

There are a few specific, unmistakably Cantonese touches sitting on top of that.

And there are plenty of rules and special hands that appear to be distinctly LRC.

In other words, the LRC didn’t simply copy one existing version of Mahjong. It seems to have built its own game using pieces from several traditions (Shanghai as the real skeleton, Cantonese in a few specific places, Taiwanese around the edges) and then added plenty of its own like the latest edition of the Sapphire Hand in 2025.

That is why trying to decide whether it is “really” Taiwanese becomes a bit pointless.

It is its own variant.

And that’s actually okay

I don’t think this makes the game any less interesting.

Quite the opposite.

Mahjong has always traveled. Rules change when games move from one community to another. People add hands, change scoring, simplify complicated rules, and develop house rules that eventually become traditions.

That’s how games evolve.

The important thing is simply to know which version you’re playing.

So if you’re sitting around a table in Karachi playing what we commonly call Taiwanese Mahjong, you’re not necessarily playing the same rules as someone sitting down to play Mahjong in Taiwan.

You’re playing a Hong Kong/LRC-derived Taiwanese-style variant that has traveled through Dubai to Karachi.

And once you know that, a lot of the apparent contradictions between different “Taiwanese Mahjong” rulebooks suddenly make sense.

There isn’t necessarily one of you playing it “wrong.”

You may just be playing different versions of Taiwanese-style Mahjong.

So what should we call it?

For Mahjong Mates, I’m going to call the version we teach:

Hong Kong-style Taiwanese Mahjong (LRC Rules)

It’s a mouthful, but it’s much more accurate than simply calling it Taiwanese Mahjong.

And perhaps that’s the most useful thing to know before you sit down at a new table:

Don’t assume that “Taiwanese Mahjong” means the same thing everywhere.

Ask which rules.

Because, as I’m discovering, there is a lot more than one game hiding behind that name.