How a Mahjong Club Is Redefining Social Life in New York City

On a Tuesday afternoon in June, dozens of mahjong tables were set up in the garden of The Standard hotel in New York City’s East Village. The sun shone through the trees onto the green tablecloths. Joanne Xu, one of the four founders of the Green Tile Social Club, placed 144 mahjong tiles in four rows on each table and waited for more than 100 players to begin their evening.

One of the largest mahjong clubs in New York City and a driving force behind one of the latest trends in nightlife, Green Tile Social Club breaks the stereotype of playing in your grandparents’ basement and attracts a mostly young crowd wearing Y2K-style clothing, sipping mocktails and listening to live EDM in the background.

The club’s four co-founders, Xu, Sarah Teng, Grace Liu and Ernest Chan, are all graduates of the University of Texas at Austin and Asian Americans. After graduating, they moved to New York City and began playing mahjong together in Teng’s apartment. It started as a Sunday ritual, Teng said, but as more friends asked to join, they say they saw a growing demand for the game and community from young Asian Americans like them.

“There was so much demand and so much interest in these young Asian and Asian American communities that were looking for the same thing we were looking for, but it didn’t exist yet,” Teng recalls of the decision to start the club in May 2022. Although all four founders have full-time jobs, they organize the club as a side hustle.

The group says between 100 and 300 people attend their events, which typically cost about $25 per ticket.

Mahjong, an ancient tile-based game with roots in Chinese culture that originated in the 19th century, has found its way into everyday social life in the United States. Many young Asian Americans grew up watching their parents and grandparents play the game.

“What I love about this game is that it brings back a lot of memories from my childhood, especially of my grandfather who is no longer with us. This is something that is really close to my heart,” said 25-year-old Armand Pappas, an event participant who played mahjong with his family during his childhood in Westchester, New York.

When four people sit down at a table, a small community is automatically formed. And when this expands to 5, 12 or even 20 tables in the same place, a bond is formed. At a meeting of the Green Tile Social Club, people talked about their childhood experiences, patiently taught each other different styles of Mahjong and exchanged contact details with people they had just met. The creative and diverse events are attracting more and more young people who do not come from the same cultural background.

The Green Tile Social Club’s mission is to connect with and give back to the Asian American community. In addition to ticketed events, the group also hosts free monthly meetings to teach beginners the game of Mahjong.

This summer, the Green Tile Social Club is hosting a series of events called “Mahjong in the Garden.” By setting up mahjong tables in local community gardens and green spaces, they hope to reconnect players with nature.

“In an ecosystem like Green Tile, we need to constantly listen to each other and understand and hear what we ultimately long for and desire in our own culture and our own cultural expression,” said Xu, noting that the group has ambitions to expand further in the future.