Anyone who is interested in playing Mahjong must be able to identify and understand Mahjong tiles first. These tiles come with interesting pictures on them, which are actually the Chinese symbols. Earlier these tiles were made of bones that were often backed with bamboo but today catalin mahjong tiles and tiles made from Bakelite, celluloid, and nylon are very popular. Also called as cards, they are a total of 144 tiles, grouped into suits, honor, and bonus tiles. There are “three” simple suits consisting of stones, characters, and bamboos followed by two “honor” suits comprising winds and dragons and one optional suit of flowers. It is important to learn every symbol properly if you want to master the art of playing this skillful mind boggling game.
So, let’s start with the thorough review on what different Mahjong tiles depict: First is the Stones, Also known as wheels or circles these tiles highlights one to nine round shapes on each tile. This round shape represents a coin and has a square hole in the middle. There are four sets of stones and each set contains nine tiles, making a total of 36 stones in each game set. Read More : Mahjong Tiles: Let The Game Begin! Coming over to the Characters, you can even call them numbers, thousands or coins. These have the character “wan” over them, meaning ’10,000’plus the Chinese character for the designated numbers. You must learn to read these numbers in Chinese in order to arrange the tiles in the right numerical order. Like stones, characters too are 36 in number in each game set. Now, let’s discuss the Bamboo mahjong tiles, often called as sticks due to the picture of bamboo sticks over the tiles, these tiles represent the strings. They are numbered from one to nine but the number one tile does not have a bamboo stick, instead, it has a bird sitting on a bamboo. Due to this it is sometimes also called a bird. Like stones and characters, bamboos are also 36 in number in each game set. Starting up with the honor tiles, the very first in the list is the four Wind tiles. These depict the characters for compass directions such as East Wind, West Wind, South Wind and North Wind. For the game of Mahjong, one must learn to read the directional characters in Chinese. There is a total of 16 winds in each game. Must Read : Get involved in the interesting Chinese World of Mahjong Tiles game! Following up is the three Dragons or Arrow tiles, which have derived their meaning from the ancient imperial exam, archery and Confucius’ cardinal virtues. They come in red, green and white with different representations. These are altogether 12 in number. Last but not the least is the Bonus Tiles, which is the set of eight tiles featuring pictures of flowers over them. Counted as the optional tiles these are used to complete tile combinations and help players to earn extra points. Likewise, there are mahjong joker stickers that can be used to replace any suited or honor tile. Thus, once you get the knowledge about these mahjong tiles, you are ready for the mahjong game.
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