Mahjong Quotes

Now, with no hate group to run, Jerry spent his days playing Mah-jong on his computer

Superheroes are just American myth. They haven’t been passed down long enough to take spiritual form, but if they last another few centuries, I reckon I’ll be playing mahjong with Bruce Wayne on the same ethereal table as George Washington.” “What?” Zack shot to a new level of disbelief. “But superheroes aren’t actually worshiped as real.” “Then what’s Comic-Con, huh?

It was an aspiring neighbourhood that retained a faint edge of slum, typical of Shanghai. Pensioners in Mao-era padded jackets would sit on doorsteps playing mah-jong, oblivious to the Prada-clad girls sweeping past on their way to work.

It seems to me, however, that there are two different types of loss of humanity. The rightist type can be seen in a certain phase of the so-called American lifestyle. Those who become full of despair while chasing their insatiable desire for pleasure belong to this type. The nihilistic trend evident in the popularity of not only mahjong and pinball games but also in dances like “the monkey” and “go-go” dancing should be regarded as typical symptoms of this rightist type of loss of humanity.

The only groups I willingly joined were spontaneous, short-lived, and usually game-playing.

The ski club was a frugal and intergenerational group. It gave dime-store trophies for speed and agility within categories of gender, age, and experience, and so eventually everyone got a trophy.

I didn’t think of myself as competitive. I thought in terms of having fun playing games and trying to win, but with me it was more hoping to win. I didn’t have that killer instinct they say is required to get to the top. I couldn’t see myself behaving as my dad did with his vociferous love for golf and football. The house resounded with his yells and groans during PGA and NFL tournaments. It seemed to me that yelling in itself required a killer instinct.

… I notice differences in how we all handle the mahjong tiles. Pat and Amy treat the tiles with something bordering on reverence. They silently select tiles for discard from their racks and place them gently on the tabletop, in a dainty almost whispering motion. Sue and I place our discard tiles down so they make that clicking sound I have always loved hearing. Betty flings her tiles onto the tabletop with a throw-away motion befitting the worthless items they are.

Luck is flow and force. There's no power that can fully take that into account, fate is still wavering.

first wind tile next to the number that appears on the dice. For example,

She imagined the trade in meanings as a kind of game, in which tokens shaped like mahjong tiles were exchanged and switched. Signs moved from one world to another, clacked together, made new sequences. A man in Bolshevik Russia became virtually Chinese; a world unfolded from a paper envelope. This game existed in the borderless continent of her father’s head. She could see how he concentrated: ‘cher’ in Russian, ‘neve’ in Italian, ‘snow’ in English, until he arrived at the sound ‘xue’, and then the character: the radical symbol for rain, the strokes for frozen, the little block of marks that revealed the transition from alphabets to ideograms.

Mystery By Moonlight by Mary C. Jane.

Gradually our surroundings became more residential. We passed wide, open doorways. These I checked automatically, but they offered no danger, only miscellaneous domestic scenes: four elderly women absorbed in a game of mahjong; a group of boys surrounding a television; a family at the supper table. We passed an old shrine, its red paint peeling in the tropical moisture. Incense from the brazier within pervaded my senses with the recollected emotions of childhood.

The elderly in China play mah-jong. American senior citizens go on cruises and play golf. Europeans visit museums, tour wineries and dine at Michelin-star restaurants. Indian elders visit temples.

He had stayed out all night playing mah-jong at a friend’s place and come home with a drowsy mind,

I’d thanked her politely and given her a large bag full of condoms, but I had not stopped by. If her group had found a way to make mahjong into foreplay, I did not possess the mental fortitude to know about it.

Although I drank little, I smoked about twenty cigarettes a day, and when I played mahjong all night long, as I sometimes did, I smoked fifty or more. I did not have much to do with the other Japanese in Hankow, and for that reason I was soon able to speak Chinese pretty well.

The old fellow gazed out at the empty tent, painted a soft green by the carbide lamps, and at the tables, now missing their tablecloths, and felt utterly desolate, imagining that this is what his funeral would be like: the tent would become a place of mourning, but there would be no dutiful sons or grandsons in mourning attire kneeling before his coffin, nothing but a few casual acquaintances playing mahjong through the night

I don't think you two have even tried to beat me," says Albie with obvious dissatisfaction as he declares "Mahjong" for a final time. "Sorry, Albie," she says. "It just wasn't going my way today. Well done." She reaches across the table and begins to stack the tiles to pack them away, her hand accidentally brushing against Jack's as he simultaneously returns his pieces to the centre of the table. She glances at him, wondering if he too felt the surge of energy pass between them. "I'd like a rematch," says Jack, his eyes fixed firmly on Lillian's. "I feel sure I can only improve my performance with practice.

The surrounding Clerics could set up a table and start playing Mahjong if they wanted to.

the surrounding Clerics could set up a table and start playing Mahjong of they wanted to

If I were in Manila, I doubt I would ever have to make a trip to the grocery alone. There would be family—sisters, brothers, cousins, nieces, nephews, in the absence of whom, amigas, yayas, even drivers could be counted on… If I were in Manila, instead of here, I would never have enough time to sit alone on a bench on the sidewalk or walk down the street or ride trains by myself. I would be chauffeured. I would be chaperoned. I would spend Sunday afternoons playing mah-jong or having tea or shopping or exchanging gossip with my friends, rather than sweeping floors or doing the laundry or tending to the garden or overseeing the work of some enterprising teen shoveling the snow off the front yard.

Given extensive leisure, what do not the Chinese do? They eat crabs, drink tea, taste spring water, sing operatic airs, fly kites, play shuttle-cock, match grass blades, make paper boxes, solve complicated wire puzzles, play mahjong, gamble and pawn clothing, stew ginseng, watch cock-fights, romp with their children, water flowers, plant vegetables, graft fruits, play chess, take baths, hold conversations, keep cage-birds, take afternoon naps, have three meals in one, guess fingers, play at palmistry, gossip about fox spirits, go to operas, beat drums and gongs, play the flute, practise on calligraphy, munch duck-gizzards, salt carrots, fondle walnuts, fly eagles, feed carrier-pigeons, quarrel with their tailors, go on pilgrimages, visit temples, climb mountains, watch boatraces, hold bullfights, take aphrodisiacs, smoke opium, gather at street corners, shout at aeroplanes, fulminate against the Japanese, wonder at the white people, criticize their politicians, read Buddhist classics, practise deep-breathing, hold Buddhist séances, consult fortune-tellers, catch crickets, eat melon seeds, gamble for moon-cakes, hold lantern competitions, burn rare incense, eat noodles, solve literary riddles, train pot-flowers, send one another birthday presents, kow-tow to one another, produce children, and sleep.