The Game People Played: Mahjong in Modern Chinese Society and Culture
The Game People Played: Mahjong in Modern Chinese Society and Culture Maggie Greene, Montana State University Abstract This article considers the discourse surrounding the popular Chinese table game of mahjong in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, using it as a barometer to trace social and cultural changes during the late Qing and Republican periods. After analyzing the connection between mahjong; its forerunner, madiao; and their antithesis, weiqi (go), it traces the changing position of mahjong in Chinese society from a game seemingly loathed by literati to a staple of bourgeois parlors. Drawing on a variety of journals, newspapers, and visual sources, the article further explores culture from class and gender perspectives in the late Qing and Republican periods, as mahjong moved from a visibly male activity to one largely associated with women. Finally, it considers the relationship between games and discourses of modernity, and the important changes taking place regarding leisure time in the twentieth century. The article argues that mahjong has been uniquely resistant to regulation and control. Enjoyment of the game spread across class and gender lines, despite the efforts of reformers, for reasons that reflect and embody key shifts from the late Qing dynasty through the end of the Republican period. Keywords: China, Republican, Qing, mahjong, madiao, weiqi, go, games, leisure In 1927, the eminent Chinese writer Hu Shi lamented the contrast between China’s national pastime and those of other countries. England had cricket; America had baseball; Japan had wrestling. “And China? China’s national game,” he wrote, “is mahjong” ([1927] 1998, 45). Hu Shi then suggested that the game was dangerous enough to the fledgling Republic of China that it should be classed along with footbinding and opium as a great social peril.
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