How Mahjong became LA’s unlikeliest love language

Living in Los Angeles has always felt competitive. Professional champions like the Dodgers and the Lakers surround us, and LA’s growing club scene – from Little Tokyo Table Tennis and Backyard Squabbles fighting club to Avant Garde Fencers Club and the Compton Cowboys – thrives on culture clashes. LA is a city of risk-takers, and East Never Loses is my biggest bet. In Mahjong, the East Wind holds special significance. As East Wind, your wins are doubled – but so are your losses. After years of hosting Mahjong events on the side, I quit my job last year to go all-in on Mahjong and its future in LA.

It’s easier to gamble when it’s for love. I first fell in love with Mahjong through movies like Lust, Caution and Goodbye South, Goodbye. In those films, Mahjong holds the hidden motives of each character. You can learn a lot about someone’s true nature by how they play Mahjong. Are they patient or impulsive? How do they organize their tiles? Do they pay close attention to other players? Deep into play, the Mahjong table can feel intimate. You can get caught in its rhythms and the highs and lows of winning and losing. Like any true sport, it removes you from any sense of time. Traditional Mahjong consists of a minimum of 16 rounds and it can be notoriously drawn out. But sometimes, even after many hours of playing, I’ll still be the one to ask: “One more game?”

To celebrate the Year of the Tiger in 2022, I invited friends over for my first Mahjong party in my Pasadena apartment with its little yellow kitchen. Everyone dressed up for the occasion – I wore a powder-pink two-piece Chinese suit, and my friends arrived one after another in vibrant colors. For once, food wasn’t the main attraction. The real draw was the Mahjong table, constantly surrounded by a lively crowd eager to learn how to “pong” and “chi”. At the end of that night, so many friends asked me: “When can we play again?”

For many Asian Americans, Mahjong feels like a buried memory ready to be rediscovered. After that first party, I realized Mahjong could be more than just a living-room gathering. To bring it to a larger audience in LA, I teamed up with three friends and started Mahjong Mistress. We wanted to start a woman-run collective focused on educating people about Mahjong through social gatherings. Over the past few years, it’s been an epic run. We’ve thrown some of the most notorious Mahjong parties all over LA, but over time, it has become more than just a party. Mahjong Mistress planted the seed for the East Never Loses community and helped reconnect me with my Taiwanese roots. 

I grew up in North Carolina, but I dreamed of living in LA the first time I had boba and drove down the Pacific Coast Highway. In 2016, I finally moved to Echo Park, eager to create community with other Asian Americans. Mahjong became the perfect vehicle for building those connections. It has a proven track record of fostering community. In the early 1900s, it helped Chinese immigrants build connections, exchange resources and make a little extra untaxed income on the side. Though the game originated in China, its cultural roots and traditional style of play have often been whitewashed – in America, Mahjong has historically been played primarily by wealthy white elites.

The whitewashing of Mahjong in America is changing with East Never Loses and other Asian-led Mahjong communities like the Green Tile Social Club in New York and Four Winds in Toronto. We’re a new generation of players passionate about reconnecting with our roots and meeting new people. I take pride in how people from all walks of life can end up at one table. Our Mahjong games are played with respect for Mahjong’s past, but this isn’t your Po Po’s Mahjong – I’ve thrown Mahjong parties where people make out at the end of the night. 

I love seeing what was once played in family homes and Chinatown alleyways years ago now enjoyed openly in spaces across LA. Mahjong is everywhere here. It’s popping up in restaurants, clubs and cafes throughout the city. East Never Loses has hosted parties in the garden of Hauser & Wirth, the pantry room of Fatty Mart in Mar Vista and even the patio of a Chinese gang-run dive bar in San Gabriel Valley. In the year since I started East Never Loses, I’ve met my girlfriend (at the Mahjong tables), built a thriving community and somehow managed to scrape out a living teaching and growing Mahjong. 

Since the fires ravaged LA, I haven’t gone out much, and I’ve put a hold on Mahjong events. It’s hard to throw a party when the city you love feels so irreversibly changed. But, just last week, I was at Otomisan, one of my favorite Japanese restaurants in Boyle Heights. It’s tiny and feels like your grandma’s kitchen, with around 15 seats. While catching up with an old friend, Susan from Mahjong Mistress walked through the door. She sat down and joined our table. A few minutes later, two more friends I’d met through East Never Loses came in for a bowl of Udon. They also stopped by and chatted at our booth.

After my interactions at Otomisan, I could feel the energy of the city returning. In just one hour, that tiny restaurant was filled with connections I’d made through Mahjong. It gave me hope that, in some ways, LA never changes. It will always find new ways to bring people together. What started as a wild bet has turned into something much bigger: a network of connections, friendships and opportunities I never expected. In the gamble I took on Mahjong in LA, it feels like I’ve already won far more than double.