By the time my grandmother passed, the sound of mahjong tiles clinking together had already become a ghost in our family. Once, it was the heartbeat of our gatherings—her weathered hands moving swiftly, the faint scent of tea in the air, the occasional outburst of triumph or exasperation. But as the years went on, my parents played less, my cousins lost interest, and I never learned.

Then she was gone.

Something in me ached to reconnect—to hear the rhythm again, to understand the game that had once brought my family together. So, I did what I had never thought to do before: I stepped into the underground world of Taipei’s mahjong parlors.

Mahjong in Taiwan has always existed in a strange space, hovering between culture and crime. Technically, gambling is illegal under Taiwan’s Criminal Code, but mahjong parlors have found ways to skirt the law, marketing themselves as “recreational spaces.” Some charge by the hour, others disguise their betting under membership fees. If a place is raided, it’s usually not because of mahjong itself, but because someone—an unlucky owner or an informant’s target—has drawn too much attention.

A Game of Memory and Change

I walked into my first parlor in Taipei’s Wanhua district, where neon signs flickered above an unmarked staircase. Inside, it smelled of cigarette smoke and something older, like dust settled into fabric over decades. The men at the tables barely looked up as I entered, their eyes fixed on their tiles.

I sat down with a group of older women who reminded me of my grandmother. They looked me over with curiosity but didn’t ask questions. “Watch,” one of them instructed. “Learn.”

And I did. I watched the way their hands moved instinctively, the way they anticipated each other’s plays. It was part logic, part intuition, all history.

One woman, Ah-Mei, had been playing here for nearly 20 years. “This place used to be packed,” she told me, shuffling the tiles with a practiced ease. “Back in the ‘90s, mahjong was everywhere—families, parlors, streetside tables. Now, it’s not the same.”

She wasn’t wrong. In the last two decades, Taipei’s mahjong parlors have been disappearing. In 2013, estimates suggested there were over 1,000 registered mahjong halls in the city, but today, the number is far lower. Police crackdowns have increased, and younger generations are more likely to be playing mobile versions of mahjong on their phones than sitting at a table with physical tiles.

A New Fight for Legitimacy

Yet, despite this decline, mahjong refuses to fade completely. In 2022, a political movement called Mahjong the Greatest Party in Taiwan emerged, arguing that mahjong should be decriminalized and fully recognized as a cultural tradition rather than just a form of gambling. Their message resonated with a surprising number of people.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Chen Bo-Yi, a 34-year-old entrepreneur I met at another parlor in Zhongshan. “Taiwan has legalized sports betting, the lottery, even e-sports gambling. But mahjong? The game our grandmothers played? Still treated like a crime.”

Bo-Yi himself had started a small, private mahjong club where young professionals could play without fear of breaking a crime. His goal, he told me, was to revive mahjong’s place in Taipei’s social scene—not as an underground vice, but as a respected game of skill.

The Future of Mahjong

As I played more, I saw the culture shift firsthand. There were the older parlors, where the air was thick with history, but also newer, upscale venues where craft cocktails were served alongside the tiles. There were young players like Bo-Yi, treating it as a sophisticated hobby, and veterans like Ah-Mei, who still clung to the smoky halls of the past.

I thought about my grandmother, about how she had learned to play at a time when it was uncontroversial, when no one questioned whether it was gambling or culture—it was simply life.

Mahjong in Taipei is changing. It is moving, adjusting, surviving.

And for me, as I finally learned to shuffle the tiles in my own hands, it felt like something more. It felt like bringing my grandmother’s world back to life—one click at a time.