Mahjong West Wind Tile

It identifies the West member of mahjong’s four wind tiles. The wind tiles are directional honor tiles, a special group alongside the numbered suits.

The earliest documented mahjong sets were collected in the late 1860s to mid-1870s; that does not date the game's invention. Its deeper ancestry remains debated. The three numbered suits are linked to Chinese money-suited playing cards, whose suits represented money. Màdiào, a Chinese card game from the Ming dynasty, has been proposed as a possible ancestor.

How did mahjong take on different social meanings?

Its social meaning shifted as the game crossed communities. Mahjong developed around the Yangtze River Delta in eastern China and reached wider Chinese urban audiences. By the 1920s, it had gained an international reputation. In the United States, marketers presented it as an exotic, cosmopolitan Chinese consumer good; Chinese American players also used it for community and intergenerational connection.

The National Mah-jongg League formed in 1937. After World War II, an American version of mahjong spread through Jewish women's networks.