Directions for Playing “Ma-Jong” for Shanghailanders, 1910

Posted: May 27th, 2026 | No Comments »

Mahjong of course remains a part of life in the Chinese world, and is having a sometimes curious sort of revival among some groups in America at the moment attracting attention – as in the slightly bizarre March New York Times magazine piece which led to a lot of justified ridicule online – below if you haven’t seen it). Of course Mahjong has a history and was also popular with Shanghailanders in the early twentieth century. And so guides and rules had to be published in English too by enterprising local publishers.

A rare copy of Directions for Playing Ma-Jong, (Mahjong) published by Ven Ku Tsar & Co., (文源齋), a curio and fine arts dealer located in the Shanghai French Concession of during the early 20th century. It’s just nine pages with illustrations. The address is #70 Yen Hai Street, Old North Gate (Laobeimen), Shanghai – so the old town (Nanshi). Their store was at #416 Rue Eugene Bard (which, depending on which end of the street #416 at that time, was either Taicang Road (South) or Shunchang Road (North).

[nd], c.1910, full page illustration followed by 9pp text

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