1924-09-30 — Page 2

Page

WILKINSON'S

LINCAK

THE HONGKONG DAILY PRESS, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30TH, 1924

TANSAN

The Ideal Drink in the Hot Weather

THE ABSOLUTE PURITY ...

OF

MAH JONG.

ITS RISE AND PRESENT PERIL.

BIJOU PERIOD PASSED,

Nor were these the only commercial by-products of the game. Teachers with social backing sprang up over night, as did the tango and turkey trot teachers twelve years ago in our early Vernon Castle period. Each of these" teachers. BY HELEN BULLITT LOWRY.}

whether in New York or Washington or San Francisco society, promptly begun Rumour has been about that the rogue teaching her own private methods-one for Mah Jong is on the wane. Rumour she might have developed the night: has even had it that Mah Jong is about before. After five lessons each pupil of to return to China whence it bailed each teacher was ready in her turn to from, to take up its venerable life again hang out her shingle, After five lessons far east of Suez. Bumour has indicated more each pupil of each just-taught- that the life of our missionaries in the teacher was ready to bang out her foreign field" is at last to be allowed shingle, too, all of whom disseminating barrassment of their having to explain sonal, over-night conclusions. away the passion for China's own pri Meanwhile, the fashionable hotela öpen- vate gambling gana in Christian Endead Mah Jong rooms (hasty interiorly voured America.

WILKINSON'S TANSAN to return to normaley without the emas. Oriental and eternal verities their per

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TEL CENTRAL No. 135.

DAIRY FARM NEWS.

13

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The following report is the result of an attempt to check up on these rumours, The Ending is by no means uncontro versial-it might be phrased: "Yes and No." Mah Jong is by no means done for -yet the game is in peril.

J

The thing runs. paradoxically" this

decorated in red lacquer and incense burners), where lessons could be had for a consideration. One dog kennel concern, to my knowledge, cabled over to China for a shipment of pugs that had not been saleable in this country since 1500. Overnight Mah Jong maga. zine sprang into being, with salaried editors and writers and advertising i columns.

All this while the actual industrial

The ware of, the Mah Jong crate has admittedly passed its crest. Yet there Thus boomed the by-product business are more people playing Mah Jong, toughout 1092 and 1923, stimulating day than there were a year ago, whengs socially, wherever it could get n the rage was bottrat. The old bridge took in. habirues and the cold-blooded society bridge, gamblers have definitely returned forces were gathering. Two hundred im to the ways of their fathers. This parti perting frms were developing their Mab cularly applies to the Eastern seaboard, Jong branches-many of them fly-by where the craze has had a year of it tonight concerns, hastily capitalized for the Run its cONTSE But meanwhile an en tirely new world of players has been call ed into being made up of the sociable folk who are interested primarily in the party instead of in the scientific, play or in the gaming-the brand of chatty beings who have been out of their element ever since the Right and Left Bower were ostracized from goed society.

purpose. la round numbers $1,500,000 worth of sets were imported in 1921 But that wasn't all. Four factories, three of them in New England and one in New York, poured out ivory tiles. Across the water Germany and Austria chimed into the international anthem, unti, to-day the best cheap sets are coming from those two countries.

This year thou who do not want to

All in all the capital invested in this! play Mah Jongno longer have to play fad runs high into the millions. It not to"keep-up Mah Jong appearances. It

a Senatorial lobby-at any rate a well- is no longer the thing to do." In organized social lobby-was inevitable. stead. it is now the thing one does, it Where the Vogue for auction bridge had one wants to do it. Mah Jong has pass been the product of slow, unstimulated ed out of its incense-buraing period-itsvolution, the craze for Mah Jong has In-Chinese-Costume charity bazaar apoch. certainly occurred more in accordance One no longer feels deliciously Oriental with Mr. Bayan's ideas on biology, when uttering Chows and Punga. stend, the time has come when the game has got to make good as a way to spend the evening. It has definitely passed behaving to prove itself as a good game. yond its bijou period.

Chaos has been the result iustend of cosmos. That's one of the real reasons why Mah Jong is up against it to-day,

of fashion. This defect can be traced instrail of resting ugly on the crest

Witness the 10-cent decks of Mah Jong to be had at Woolworth's. So are 81. back to its synthetic American creation. near-ivory arts prevalent at department stores. Two-dollar-and-a-half sets are syndicated in chain drug stores. There, alone. is indication enough that the purely fashionable period of Mah, Jong has passed. Therein lies its present strength. Therein, too. lies the peril, Which the commercial interests behind the game have brought upon it.

Those shadowy commercial interests be hind the game and the social fortunes of the game itself are. in truth, inextric ably interwoven-nor can one understand the dramatic story of its brilliant social fortune and of its present social hazards without realizing also the tale of its com mercial incking.

I

In the first place, the rules of the game that Babcock issued hardly scratched, the surfacer of the scientific Chinese game as it has been handied down from century to century and generation to generation. Rather, be adopted the game to His own idea, of Occidental taxte, simplifying the occult art just enough to make it assimil- able on a first try-out. That was Bah cock's personal contribution to the chaos.

We now come to the part played by the other 200 importers. They entered the seld with a patented name already in existence. But the ancient game itself and its jewel-like tiles could no more be copyrighted than could a deck of cards. Mah Duke, Mah Cheuk, Mah Chang, Pung Chow were launched, also, half a dozen cases of litigation. Each of these importers, too, was employing his own Chinese authorities and interpreters, who threw together quite a différent act of simplified Oriental rulings. All of these commercial complications added to the chaos already in existence by reason of the hordes of self-made authorities.

Into the East the story carries us. Standard Oil business took J. P. Babcock into China and the region about Shang hai, where Mah Jong is the indigenous game alike of mandarins and coolies.

Balenek's first move at least this is the way Oriental gossips tell the story was to introduce the native game into the American Club at Shanghi, thereby cannily creating a demand in the smart

So it has come about that society to American Colony frequented by our day is split into a dozen warring eamps. naval officers. Having created the de-

"The society folk of Washington can't mand, he thriftily set about the business play without warfare with the society of applying it. This next step. neces folk of Baltimore. Nay more; each city sitated the diplomatic achievement of is divided up into a dozen quarrolling getting Chinese sets translated into Engeliques that find that they cannot play lish. And it was only after vass Con with each other in peace, because this facian difficulties that he prevailed upon clique plays by Babcock and that clique the native workmen to engrave S.NE and W. upon their native winds and Occidental numerals upon the dots, bams and cracks. Next he invented the name of Mah Jong and the bands titles of Chow, Pang and Woo. Then he got his invention patented,

That much achieved, one doubts if any influence save the will of Buddha could have accomplished the next step. Mys terious currents which produce a fashion are matters which even the couturiers of Paris have not solved completely. There might have been many a slip between

by Foster. If there is one stranger in the crowd, the rules of warfare have to be discussed beforehand as meticulously as rulings of The Hague Tribypal-were supposed to be discussed.

In the interest of haste and simplicity in America & quick-moving, high score game has been developed. In China the slow-moving, scientific game of blocking opponents' hands has been the method of play throughout the ages. The American game depends more upon the element of change. The Chinese game can be con- trolled by skill. The high score game the puzzled Chinese craftsman, carving technique was a thing that could be ac- mysterious and S. symbols and the quired in a month. But the subtle offen- famous Spring of 1923, when Long Issive and defensive Chinese game was the land, the ultimate centre of our Ameri product of years of intensive study and can social life, should be turned over to practice and centuries of poker face. the Mah Jong dynasty, and when every show girl le line would possess * that insolent compromise with tha tradi- Pekingese as her tribute to the Mah Jong tions of the centuries. The very persons. period of our American civilization. "who took it up so excitedly just a year

Only there wasn't that ship. By reason of "the American naval officers easy thrills. The people who were bridge ago, are now quite frankly tired of ita Mah Jong made the necessary jump habituén before are bridge habitués across the Pacific and established itself

again.

Mah Jong is now paying the price for

in the smartest society of San Francisco. True, the Chinese version of Mah Jong wall that menaces the game I mean the There is that third great danger as had been played for a generation in the actual democratizing of it. Mah Jong. amart kitchens of the town, where many is no longer the exclusive plaything of a month's wages had changed hands over the rich, as it was when a set called for the tiles. That was a mere detail. Smart the expenditure of $100. In the Summer San Francisco had not discovered Mah and Fall of 1923 a gigantic commercial Jong. The 8100 and $200 English-speak-drive was launched by the manufacturers ing sets on the market were just the and importers of medium-priced sets. commercial impetus needed. From the" Golden Gato Mah Jong jumped the con- south the democratic drive took its de- From east to west and from north to tinent at one leap and established itself partment store way. Itinerant derron- on the Eastern seaboard.

From

Milwaukee "played"

and his point on-sinister inn' exactly the right word.

Kansas City, St. Paul and Des Moines "synthetic, that's it-induences behind the game be windows of department stores they set and Chattanooga. In plate-gings show gin to be realized. Society editors of the metropolitan sheets say that social Chinese maids in native costume could their stage business. Two little pressure began to be felt from a-dozen there be seen playing with a 5 set sources. The type of persons who have against a background of lacquer the all- the reputation of commercializing their too-familiar Hollywood version of the social position to mitigate the high cost East and its sina and its mysteries. of living were very much on the job..

strators

up

So, too, were the serious "authorities" While, inside the store, a Mah Jong in- on auction bridge on the job. They tous instruction to all who came inquir. structor, also in costume, gave gratui. straightway set themselves the task of ing-whether they purchased a set or becoming authorities on Mah Jong, and whether they didn't. then issued their own" authoritative" textbooks on the subject. Also other per- of the great common people, of whom Bo Mah Jong came into the possession sons who had never been authorities on the Lord in His infinite wisdom (or care any game suddenly announced themselves lessness) made so many. To-day the the Gnal arbiters on Mah Jong and like- wise issued 2 books on its technique.

(Continued on next Oplimin.)

THE KING OF THE SADDLE

JACK HOXIE

IN

"WHERE IS THIS WEST? " FINAL SHOW TO-DAY, 5.15 & 9.15 p.ni.

Commencing TO-MORROW IRENE RICH & MONTE BLUE

IN

||

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majority of sets that are being sold aro" of the $5 and $10 variety. Mah Jong can no longer depend for its popularity on any artificial social prestige. Of na avail now organized efforts to restore that artificial prestige. For better or for worse, the game is irretrievably com. mitted to the ways of democracy,

There are other lines of defence, how- ever, where organized effort is plainly being put forth. On all sides there are signs that the propagandists of the game are trying at this late day to insert into the American play the Chiness method of doing things. In short, to. raise the standard of playing until Mah Jong can compete with bridge on its own uncompromising scientific ground, instead of depending for its patrons on Jong just because it permits gossip and the sociable. folk who have taken up Mah philandering and social dalliance-New OBTAINABLE EVERYWHERE.

York Times.

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