The Clacking Class: How Mahjong Took over the Suburbs

It’s a weekday afternoon in Weston, and I’ve just been ushered into Jenny Seeman’s soothing lounge—a capacious oasis of sea green and lilac. This is perhaps the best table in town, besides a corner booth at La Padrona. Here, Seeman, a charismatic, warm mom of four grown children, teaches a new generation how to play the year’s hottest hobby: mahjong.

Step into Seeman’s home, and it’s immediately clear this isn’t your grandmother’s idle Florida parlor game anymore. These days, she says, busy women (and yes, even a few men) are eschewing pickleball courts and headache-inducing happy hours in favor of a common objective: a winning hand. Mahjong’s rules haven’t changed over the years, but tiles are now clacking everywhere from Belmont Country Club to Buckingham Browne & Nichols. The main reason? Gorgeous sets that double as objets d’art and dynamic teachers-slash-influencers. Classes are held everywhere from Brookline’s toniest private clubs to breweries and the Boston Public Library, and designer sets retail for upward of $400.

Though she had taught friends before, Seeman’s mahjong empire really picked up steam with a single request: Could she teach a few games at a holiday party at M. Flynn? The former environmental-education teacher and business owner said yes and suddenly found herself with more students than she’d bargained for. Dover moms wanted lessons. High schoolers needed her for senior projects. Now, Seeman runs a mahjong academy from her living room (as well as other people’s living rooms and community spaces), with her classes spanning 2-plus hours each. “It’s not rocket science, but it is tons of information,” she says, explaining that starting with at least three sessions is essential. Some weeks, she teaches for up to 30 hours. The fiftysomething brunette represents a new breed of player—stylish, friendly, and unapologetic about turning a simple game into a way of life. Her tools? Colorful sets from the Mahjong Line, the Dallas-based company that’s credited with sparking the current renaissance. Seeman discovered the brand when a Texas friend visited with tiles in shades no grandmother would recognize. “All these Texas people, they’re really in on things early,” she says, spreading her lavender tiles like jewels across the lilac mat. “And the tiles were beautiful.” Sets bear names like the “Newport” and “Santa Monica”—places that sound as alluring as the tiles themselves.

As Seeman guides my hands across the game pieces, I’m transported. Suddenly, I’m not arranging tiles—I’m curating an art installation for my imaginary South End pied-à-terre. It sure beats my usual entertainment: suburban game nights fueled by Codenames and lukewarm chardonnay. Quickly, I understand why mahjong—and Seeman’s lessons—are so popular: There’s something hypnotic about the ASMR-like clacking of tiles, the aesthetically pleasing setup. It’s like meditation, but prettier.

The rules are complicated enough to keep you challenged, but Seeman says gameplay becomes second nature after a few sessions. She’s also offering more than just a game—it’s a way to make social connections between camp drop-offs, workouts, and demanding careers. Best of all? You’re allowed to be terrible at it. “Sometimes when I’m teaching, I see people looking at me like a deer in headlights. Everyone learns at a different speed, but it’s possible for everyone to learn—you just have to be patient,” she says, grinning as I fumble with my tiles. “It’s the great equalizer. Don’t feel uncomfortable if you don’t get it right away.” When she disappears into the foyer to fetch her grown daughter for a game, I quickly text my friends: “We are so trying this.” My phone lights up instantly. Thumbs-up emojis all around.

Mahjong has become a hot hobby, from Washington D.C. to Weston, Mass. / Photo by Eric Lee/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

So how did an old game become the area’s haute-est hobby? First, some history: After originating in China during the 19th century, the tile-matching game made its way to the United States, gaining popularity throughout the 1920s. In 1937, a group of Jewish women founded the National Mah Jongg League (NMJL) and created the version of the game now known as American Mahjong.

Rules are intricate, but here’s the gist: There are 152 etched tiles in an American set. Players start with a hand of 13 tiles, adding and discarding them to complete a specific winning hand of 14 tiles. Even now, the NMJL issues a new card each spring with updated winning-hand combinations, and fans wait for the latest dispatch with all the anticipation of a new Freida McFadden novel.

Traditionally, tiles feature etchings of dragons, bamboo, and flowers against an ivory backdrop. By contrast, the Mahjong Line tiles radiate Warholian shades of petal pink and teal, festooned with blueberries and cheeky bags of flour (get it?). There are also coordinating playing mats, as well as cocktail napkins and totes.

Brooke Laughlin, one of Seeman’s first students, was introduced to the game in Texas, where her son attends college. “It’s very big in Dallas; it’s a huge mahjong capital,” she says. There, she stumbled into a shop selling mahjong tiles. As an interior designer who once owned the acclaimed stationery shop La Ruche on Newbury Street, the visuals appealed to her. But she didn’t want to blow $450 on game pieces until she learned how to play. “So I came back to Boston, and I’m chatting on the sidelines—Jenny’s daughter and my daughter are on the same lacrosse team—and I had no idea that she even played. And I said, ‘I was just in Dallas. I saw these tiles. I want to learn mahjong.’ And she said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m teaching. If you get a group together, I’ll teach you!’” Laughlin recalls.

This is how a trend begins. Laughlin began visiting Seeman with three friends every other week for tutorials, and now she’s meeting summer friends on Nantucket through the game. “I redecorated my living room at home at the end of last summer and in the fall, and literally bought my mahjong tiles to coordinate with the whole décor of my gathering room,” she says. “I love the aesthetic.”

Her current schedule: Mahjong Mondays in Chestnut Hill, plus a couple of other games during the week. She recently brought her set on a trip to Atlantis in the Bahamas, and it was an instant conversation-starter with fellow guests. “I’ve also taught my daughter and a bunch of her friends,” she adds. “This weekend, I had a full house with all of these 18-year-old girls who just graduated from high school, and we sat and played mahjong, which was so fun. It’s a multigenerational thing.”

This is part of the appeal: time-honored for older folks, an escape for middle-aged parents, and fast-paced enough for Gen Z. Case in point: Mother-daughter duo Beverly and Emily Shire spread the mahjong gospel through their Canasta Connection, teaching canasta and its trendier cousin, mahjong, to all ages. Think of them as mahjong’s unofficial customer-service hotline. “We kind of say to people, once we teach you, you’re ours and we’re yours,” says Beverly, a lifelong player. “When you’re playing, if you have a question, just text us and we’ll answer.”

Beverly recruited Emily when pandemic demand became too much to deal with, particularly as more people began reaching out for mahjong instruction. “I couldn’t handle the caseload,” she says, which now includes clients ranging from young people in their twenties to couples in their eighties at community centers, country clubs, and homes throughout Greater Boston. They also maintain a busy Facebook group where people can pop in, pickleball-style, looking for playing partners. “Community connection, which I think has even continued a lot more since 2020, is one of the reasons why we’re seeing a larger shift in who is playing and how many people are playing,” Emily says. “What we really do is connect people. We try to create communities.”

Aficionados also say it’s a welcome respite from costly restaurants, bars (who needs alcohol in perimenopause?), or tennis courts where athletic prowess, or lack thereof, can be painfully apparent. “Especially as we get into our forties, no one really wants to sit around at a bar,” says Erin Pennock, an interior designer in Belmont. She was introduced to the mahjong world in the most modern of ways: the group text. A mom friend wanted to try something new, and remembered seeing her family play the game as a child. Soon, she and five friends were dutifully watching a YouTube tutorial before gathering at a table to enjoy their first round.

When Pennock told her mom about her weekend plans, she was surprised. “She asked, ‘Don’t old ladies play that?’” Pennock says with a laugh. Not anymore, mom.

At the same time, modern mahjong isn’t without its complications. The Mahjong Line’s designer tiles, geared toward different personality types, don’t come cheap: The brand’s “Santa Monica” set retails for $425, while its “Minimal” line—“clever with a dry wit, this girl loves a good Eames chair, the smell of coffee shops, abnormally long walks on crisp days, and the pulse of NYC…her penmanship is essentially modern art,” per the website—starts at $375.

The high price tags, though, aren’t the only source of controversy. In 2021, the Dallas-based company, founded by three white women, faced criticism for cultural appropriation after describing traditional Chinese tiles as “all the same” and needing a “respectful refresh.” On their website (which has since been updated), the founders explained that nothing in the mahjong marketplace “came close to mirroring [their] style and personality”—the implication being that a centuries-old Chinese pastime required a makeover to appeal to a broader demographic. In a social media post, Asian-American writer Kathy Khang called it a “textbook example of #culturalappropriation.”

The expensive designer sets have raised questions about who profits from—and gets to reimagine—cultural traditions. “They’ve kind of preppified or chic-ified mahjong,” Seeman acknowledges. “But I tell people, you can buy any set on Amazon for $60.” Some friends, she’s noticed, are bonding by buying a fancy set together: “I’ve taught a lot of different people, and this is out of some people’s price points, but in some groups, what they’ve done is bought it as a group.”

Meanwhile, even longtime players can’t help but smile at the newfound popularity of a game they’ve loved for years. Natalie DeNardo has been part of a Melrose group for more than a decade, joining because it held a certain throwback mystique. “I’d always heard of mahjong because my grandmother played during my childhood, and she would always say, ‘I’m getting together with the women to play mahjong,’” she recalls. “When my group got together, I thought, ‘Oh, this would make my grandmother proud.’ That’s why it sparked my interest.”

Seeman sees the same nostalgia at work. “People are looking for a purposeful social interaction,” she says. They want “opportunities to find a mutual point of connection across political, social, religious, generational, and cultural barriers, and away from technology. I think this is a moment when people want to be distracted and find connection with other people.”

Somewhere along the way, we lost the art of simply sitting together. And while the look of the game may have changed, mahjong’s binding principle hasn’t: It’s a way to connect. While Mad Men–era women may have bonded over husbands who worked too late or their own unrealized professional ambition, today’s players gather to stop competing over pickleball or college placement, and find refuge from the endless hustle.“I’m not into playing cards. I’m not a competitive person,” says Laughlin, one of Seeman’s many disciples. “With mahjong, you’re not letting anyone down. It’s just fun; it’s a release for the day. If your to-do list is piling up, when you’re playing mahjong, you’re just playing mahjong. That’s all you’re focusing on.”

Though the look of the tiles drew Pennock in, the connections with other women keep her coming back. Unlike a neighborhood book club, where conversations fragment—kids’ schedules, school drama, then a hurried book discussion—mahjong is different. “We all have a lot of fun, because there’s value in learning a new thing together,” Pennock says. “And it’s just so great to be able to have ways to connect with each other without talking about our children.”

Here’s another thing: Making friends as an adult is brutal. Mahjong, though, offers something rare—a socially acceptable way to signal you’re current but drama-free, sophisticated but available. “I’m 36 years old, I have two young children, I work outside the home,” says Gaby Goldstein, a South Ender who began playing in 2024 at the Belmont Country Club. “And so for me, a lot of it was about finding something that was just for me—that I could do with other friends and that had nothing to do, honestly, with my family or with work, and that wasn’t just going out to drinks with people.”

Once her oldest son started kindergarten, Goldstein rallied other school moms. Now, instead of fretting over redshirting or DIBELS scores, they play mahjong, usually at theme nights ranging from “pajama party” to Bridgerton. It’s a refreshing break from her job in state government and her nonprofit volunteer work. For her and her friends, collecting tiles offers a way of self-expression, she explains. “It’s just such a beautiful thing to put out, even in your home,” she says. “You’re excited to get a set. In my group, I was the first one to have a set, and then after everybody got totally sucked in. Now everybody wants a set that reflects who they are.”

In other words, connecting over something so deliberately soothing and pretty becomes a refuge from a world that offers precious little beauty or calm. Like bread-baking or crocheting, this is more than nostalgic trend-chasing—it’s an embrace of beauty for beauty’s sake, a quiet form of resistance. “Mahjong is so beautiful that you just get totally drawn in when you see it. It sounds so cheesy, but I do think the world is so complicated and can be so dark,” Goldstein says. “Every single time you open the news, it’s something worse than the day before that. This is such a light thing to do that just has nothing to do with everything else that’s going on.”