Mahjong tiles meaning: every tile explained

Mahjong tiles look complicated, but there are only 42 different faces. Once you know the five groups, you can read any tile.

The tiles at a glance

The three suits

The suits are numbered 1 to 9, like playing cards. Players call the 1s and 9s terminals. Many sets print a small number in the corner of each tile, so you don’t need to read Chinese.

Dots (circles, coins)

Chinese name: 筒 (tǒng) or 餅 (bǐng, cakes). Each circle is a coin, the old round Chinese coin. Count the circles to read the tile: 3 circles is the 3 of dots. The 1 of dots is usually one big decorated circle.

Bamboo (sticks)

Chinese name: 條 (tiáo) or 索 (suǒ). The sticks are strings of coins, the way money was carried, threaded on a cord. Count the sticks for the number. The odd one out is the 1 of bamboo, which shows a bird, often a sparrow or a peacock, instead of a single stick.

Characters (cracks, wan)

Chinese name: 萬 (wàn). Each tile has two symbols. The bottom one, 萬, means ten thousand. The top one is the number:

So 三萬 is the 3 of characters. Together the three suits are a little money system: coins, strings of coins and ten-thousands.

The honor tiles

Honors have no numbers, and in the four-player game they can’t be used in runs.

Winds

東 East, 南 South, 西 West, 北 North. Sets made for Western players add a letter in the corner: E, S, W and N. In the four-player game, each player sits at a wind, and the wind of the round changes as the game goes on.

Dragons

• Red dragon 中 (zhōng): “middle” or “center”. It’s the first character of 中國, the name of China, Said with a different tone, zhòng, it also means hitting the target.
• Green dragon 發 (fā): “to prosper”, from 發財 (fā cái), to get rich. A lucky tile.
• White dragon 白 (bái): “white”. It’s usually a blank tile or a tile with a blue frame. A blank tile is not a spare: it’s the white dragon.

The bonus tiles

There’s one of each, and they come in two sets of four, numbered 1 to 4 to match the seats East, South, West and North.

• Flowers: plum 梅, orchid 蘭, chrysanthemum 菊 and bamboo 竹, the “four gentlemen” of Chinese painting.
• Seasons: spring 春, summer 夏, autumn 秋 and winter 冬.

In the four-player game they’re set aside and add points. In mahjong solitaire, any flower matches any flower and any season matches any season.

Not every set is the same

• Japanese (riichi) mahjong uses 136 tiles: no flowers or seasons, and often one red 5 in each suit for extra points.
• American mahjong uses 152 tiles, adding 8 jokers. Players call the characters craks and the bamboo bams.
• Mahjong solitaire uses the full 144-tile set for a matching puzzle. It shares the tiles with the four-player game, but not the rules. Our guide explains how to play mahjong solitaire.

The tiles in Kepo Mahjong

Kepo Mahjong uses the classic tiles, redrawn in the Kepo style without any text, so you can read every tile at a glance:

The matching rules are the classic ones: identical tiles match, any flower goes with any flower, and any season with any season. It’s free in your browser, with no ads, ten board layouts and a shuffle that always keeps the board solvable.