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hand-carved with colorful Chinese symbols, pictures, and writing.
    “This is the ancient game of Mahjong, and I am going to teach you girls to play.” An Lei said.
    She proceeded to remove the tiles from the case turning them face down on the table and began teaching us the rules of play. “Each player’s place is designated by East, South, West, and North determined by selecting one of each Wind tile placed face down on the table.”
    She then showed each of us how to build a wall, two tiles high and eighteen tiles long in front of each player. The four walls were then pushed together to form a square symbolizing the Great Wall of China.
    As we sat listening to her every word, she said, “It is important to ensure that the walls have no gaps and that they touch at the corners so that any lurking dragons or evil spirits are prevented from entering. The player sitting in the East position at the table throws the dice to determine which player breaks the wall. After the break and continuing in a clockwise direction around the wall, four Mahjong tiles are dealt to each player in turn starting with East and working anti-clockwise until each player has twelve tiles. Next, the first and third tiles on the top row are dealt to East, the first on the bottom row to South, the first tile on the top row to West, and the next lower tile to North. That completes the deal. East finishes with fourteen tiles while the other players have thirteen tiles each.”
    Initially, we struggled to learn the game, identify the different tiles, and what represented a Chow, a Pung, and a Kong to ultimately complete a hand. But it was great fun and after a while we began playing the game effortlessly, although the hardest part for Judy and me was learning to identify the tiles.
    Smiling, An Lei said, “I know it all seems quite complicated, but I assure you that you will learn quickly as I did, and I was a little younger than you are when I learned. The game is similar to gin rummy in that the object of Mahjong is to build sets, as well as get the highest point value to eventually complete a hand. In order to do this, each player selects and discards tiles until an entire set of combinations has been made.
    “The basic Mahjong set has 144 pieces, which contains 36 distinct kinds of bamboos, characters, and dots; four of each kind in these three suits run from one to nine. In addition, there are four pieces each of four directional tiles known as Winds and labeled East, South, West, and North. There are also four each of three Cardinal tiles which are Dragons or Honor Pieces, labeled Red Dragon, Green Dragon, and White Dragon. Lastly, there are eight optional Flowers and Seasonal tiles consisting of two sets of four tiles each.”
    And that is how we learned to play Mahjong. The days passed quickly, and Su Ling returned to school, but our games continued. Each Wednesday afternoon, Judy and I would go to her house after school, and for two hours we played, sipped tea, and ate An Lei’s delicious cookies. Except during summer vacations and school breaks for holidays, we rarely missed our weekly get together. We had an amazing time. Although we were serious about playing the game, we mostly had lots of fun. We laughed a lot and talked about school and our families and anything else that made us happy.
    In truth, Judy and I were fascinated by An Lei more so than Mahjong. She would bow to us whenever we entered their home, and we soon learned that her vast knowledge was endless. But mostly we accepted her as our peer, not as an adult, mainly because of the way she treated us. She never disciplined or scolded us when we became unruly; rather she calmly reasoned with us in her gentle manner. I would come to realize many years later that the wisdom she passed on to us during those innocent days of our childhood was priceless.
     

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    SU LING LIVED WITH her grandmother, An Lei, in a small house on Bladensburg Road, four houses down from her father’s