How Old Is Mahjong? About 150 Years, and the Dated Evidence Behind It
Mahjong is about 150 years old: the oldest surviving sets date to around 1870 and the first written mentions to the 1890s, while the Confucius story is a 1920s sales legend. The dated record, the myths, and how to date your own set.
By Two Bam Editorial
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How old is the game of mahjong?
Mahjong is about 150 years old. The National Mah Jongg League's own history places early versions of the tile game "as recently as 150 years ago in China", the oldest surviving sets date to around 1870, and the game took shape in the mid-to-late 1800s around Ningbo, built out of much older Chinese card games. Claims that it is thousands of years old, or that it goes back to Confucian times, are legends that spread with the 1920s craze.
The timeline in one breath: the game most likely began during the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864), the earliest known written mention of it came in 1893, the first Chinese guidebook in 1914, the game reached the United States in 1920, and the American version was standardized when the National Mah Jongg League formed in 1937. So every form of mahjong is younger than its reputation, and the American game is younger still.
This answer is built from published histories and named sources rather than first-hand archival research: Tom Sloper's long-running mahjong FAQ, which credits historian Michael Stanwick's research, Wikipedia's referenced history, EBSCO's Research Starters entry and the League's own pages, all checked October 2026.
The dated record, oldest first
Each row below is a piece of dated evidence rather than a story, which is why the answer lands in the 1800s and not in antiquity.
| When | What the record shows | Who says so |
|---|---|---|
| Taiping Rebellion, 1851-1864 | Strong evidence that the game began in this window, around Ningbo | Tom Sloper's history FAQ |
| Around 1870 | The earliest surviving tile sets, acquired in Fuzhou, Shanghai and Ningbo | Wikipedia's mahjong history |
| 1875 | George B. Glover gives one set to the American Museum of Natural History and the other to the Long Island Historical Society | Wikipedia, which calls them the two oldest sets known |
| 1890s | The earliest written record that describes how the game is played | Sloper |
| 1893 | Anthropologist Stewart Culin's papers: the earliest known written mention of the game in any language | Sloper, citing Japan's Mah-Jongg Museum |
| Early 1900s | The name "mahjong" comes into use; earlier writers called it ma que, chung fa and other names | Sloper |
| 1914 | Shen Yifan's guidebook, the first in Chinese, dates the game's birth to roughly thirty years earlier, in Ningbo | Wikipedia and Sloper |
| 1920 | Joseph Park Babcock publishes his rules, the "red book", and Abercrombie & Fitch starts selling sets in the United States | Wikipedia |
| 1937 | Players meet in New York City and found the National Mah Jongg League to standardize the American game | The League's own history page |
Read across the rows and the gaps tell their own story. Physical sets survive from about 1870, but no surviving record describes how the game was played before the 1890s, and the name most of the world uses was not attached to it until the early 1900s. Sloper puts both limits in one sentence: the earliest known sets go back no farther than the 1870s, and the earliest written description of the gameplay is no older than the 1890s. EBSCO's Research Starters entry, a standard library reference, lands in the same place: a tile game that originated in China during the late nineteenth century.
One story is missing from the table on purpose. Wikipedia's main text says the first Western records may be the papers of a British consul, F.E.B. Harvey, who served in Ningbo in the 1860s and described rules taught to him by Chen Yumen. Its own footnote then adds that Harvey's papers "have never been found" and that the story "is probably forged", so it cannot count as evidence.
Why you keep reading that mahjong is thousands of years old
Sloper's history FAQ opens with exactly this confusion. A reader writes in that one source says the game "goes back to Confucian times, another that it originated in the 1920s." His answer is blunt: "Mah-Jongg is NOT an ancient game, as author after author insist." He traces the ancient-origin story to "marketing hype that started in the 1920s when mah-jongg first became popular around the world." The appeal is easy to see: an imperial pedigree made a better sales story than a game invented a few decades earlier.
The legends come in several flavors, and the League lists two of them itself. "Some claim it was the game of Chinese royalty, played in secret to keep the knowledge to themselves," its game page says, while others credit a Chinese general who wanted to amuse his troops. A 1923 article in the China Weekly Review, which Sloper quotes, went further and told of a fisherman named Sze who lived near Ningbo approximately three thousand years ago. Sloper's verdict on that family of stories: "too vague or too colorful to be relied upon."
Even the League's own pages pull in two directions. Its page about the League calls mahjong "this ancient game"; its page about the game says that more recent investigations point to early versions appearing about 150 years ago. Only the second statement comes with evidence behind it.
Sellers keep the myth alive too. Sloper's FAQ on dating sets quotes a reader whose seller described a set as "170 years old", which would place it in 1834, before the game is known to have existed. If a listing promises a Qing dynasty heirloom, treat that as marketing until the set itself says otherwise.
What genuinely is old: the card games behind the tiles
The legends survive because they hold a kernel of truth. Mahjong descends from Chinese money-suited card games, and those are old. In Sloper's words, the game was "based on (inspired by, derived from) money-suited card games that do go back to ancient times." Wikipedia describes the same ancestry as draw-and-discard card games that were popular in 18th and 19th century China, and says the switch from cards to tiles most likely happened in the middle of the 19th century.
The Ningbo account even names the parent deck: Madiao paper cards, which a local official is said to have reworked into the basic cards of mahjong. So the fair way to put it is this: the family tree runs back centuries, but the tile game you would recognize at a table today is a 19th-century invention. Ask "how old is mahjong" and you are asking about the tiles, the walls and the hands, and those are about 150 years old.
Who invented mahjong, and where?
China is not in dispute; the exact city and inventor are. The leading attribution comes from the Display Hall of the Birthplace of Mahjong in Ningbo, which credits a local official named Chen Yumen (1817-1878) with modifying Madiao cards into mahjong during the reign of the Qing emperor Xianfeng. Sloper says he tends to think Chen was indeed the creator, but he adds that the attribution "still needs more research before it can be fully accepted universally by mah-jongg scholars and historians." Nobody knows exactly which changes Chen made.
Wikipedia records two disputed origins, Ningbo and Fujian. Sloper's chapter on the game's creators lists other candidates drawn from older books, including army officers stationed near Ningbo during the Taiping years and two unnamed brothers living in Ningbo in 1870-1880. What every serious account shares is the window: China, in the second half of the 1800s. The League's own summary agrees there is "general agreement that the game we play and love originated in China."
How old is the name "mahjong"?
The name is younger than the game. In the earliest writings, from the 1890s, the game went by names such as chung fa and ma que; Sloper translates "mah que" as "sparrow", after the chattering sound shuffled tiles make. In his words, "that name was not used until the early 1900s." When Joseph Park Babcock brought the game to the United States in 1920, he wanted a name he could trademark and settled on "Mah-Jongg", hyphen and double G included, which is why competitors sold the same game as Pung Chow, Ma Chiang and other names until plain "mahjong" became the generic word.
How old is American mahjong?
The American branch is a 20th-century offshoot. Wikipedia dates the first sets sold in the United States to Abercrombie & Fitch in 1920, the same year Babcock published his red book, and says the store sold 12,000 sets. Standardization came in 1937, when a group of players met in New York City and founded the National Mah Jongg League. The League says it started with 32 members and today numbers over 350,000.
Even the American game kept changing after that. According to Sloper's guide to dating sets, the League did not mandate jokers until the early 1960s, so a midcentury set without jokers was complete for its day; it simply predates the rule. For the full American story, from the 1920s craze through the League's annual card to today's revival, read our history of American mahjong from 1937 to today. For how the American branch now differs from its Chinese parent and the Japanese game, see American vs. Chinese vs. riichi mahjong.
How old is your mahjong set?
Plenty of people ask this question while holding an inherited box. Sloper's FAQ on set age gives the most practical clues, and none of them needs an appraiser:
- Western indices. If the tiles carry Arabic numerals or the letters E, S, W and N, the set was not sold before 1920; the first sets made for export to the West date to 1919-1920.
- The trademark or the red book. "MAH-JONGG" on the box, with the hyphen and double G, or a Babcock rulebook inside points to the 1920s.
- Cowbone and bamboo. Probably the 1920s to the 1940s.
- Bakelite with no actual jokers. Probably the 1930s to the 1960s, before the joker requirement.
- Stickered jokers. Sloper's checklist asks whether jokers are carved into the tile or stickered on, because the League required differing numbers of flowers and jokers over the years, and a set's jokers help date it.
- A pre-1920s claim. Sloper calls a set from before the 1920s extremely rare, and the age claims attached to them deserve the skepticism above.
A jokerless heirloom can still join a modern game with a sheet of American joker stickers (Check price on Amazon), and our guide to the joker rules that trip up every table explains how those tiles play. If you would rather keep the old set on the shelf, a current American set such as Yellow Mountain Imports' (Check price on Amazon) plays the modern card as it comes, and Elaine Sandberg's A Beginner's Guide to American Mah Jongg (Check price on Amazon) covers the rules from the first deal. For the rest of our set and table picks, see our full shortlist.
Sources
- FAQ 11. History of Mah-Jongg — Tom Sloper, Sloperama Mah-Jongg FAQs (checked October 2026)
- FAQ 11c. History of Mahjong: Who Created Mah-Jongg — Tom Sloper, Sloperama Mah-Jongg FAQs (checked October 2026)
- FAQ 11d. History of Mahjong: Earliest Writings on Mah-Jongg — Tom Sloper, Sloperama Mah-Jongg FAQs (checked October 2026)
- FAQ 7g: How Old Is My Mah-Jongg Set? — Tom Sloper, Sloperama Mah-Jongg FAQs (checked October 2026)
- Mahjong — Wikipedia (checked October 2026)
- Mahjong (game) | Research Starters — EBSCO (checked October 2026)
- The Game — National Mah Jongg League (checked October 2026)
- The League — National Mah Jongg League (checked October 2026)
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FAQ
Did Confucius invent mahjong?
No. The Confucius story is one of several origin legends, and Sloper traces the whole ancient-origin idea to 1920s marketing. The documentary evidence starts in the mid-to-late 1800s: surviving sets from around 1870 and written descriptions from the 1890s.
When did mahjong come to America?
In 1920. Abercrombie & Fitch began selling sets that year and Joseph Park Babcock published his simplified rules, which set off the 1920s craze. The American rules as players know them today began with the founding of the National Mah Jongg League in 1937.
Where was mahjong invented?
In China, most likely around Ningbo in the second half of the 19th century. Ningbo's Display Hall of the Birthplace of Mahjong credits Chen Yumen, and Wikipedia notes that Fujian is also claimed as the birthplace. Historians treat the single-inventor story as unproven.
How old is the oldest known mahjong set?
The earliest surviving tile sets date to around 1870, and the two that George B. Glover gave to American institutions in 1875 are described by Wikipedia as the oldest known sets of mahjong tiles in the world.
Is the American game as old as Chinese mahjong?
No. It branched off after the game reached the United States in 1920, was standardized by the National Mah Jongg League in 1937, and did not require jokers until the early 1960s. It is a 20th-century game built on a 19th-century one.
