If you run through iconic mahjong scenes from film — classics like “The Joy Luck Club” or the final throwdown in “Crazy Rich Asians” — they all start with an almost ritualistic shuffling, the players’ hands sweeping the table, the tiles clacking in a happy clamor.
In other words, the shuffling is where the action happens: the boisterous fun, the communal spirit, the all-important gossip. So, when videos of electronic tables — known to players as auto tables, which swallow your tiles and shuffle for you — get millions of views on TikTok, it’s easy to wonder: Doesn’t that, kind of, kill the vibe?
Not so for Jennifer Brown, whose post about her mom’s auto table has now garnered nearly 20 million views.
Ms. Brown credits the table with inspiring her and her sisters to finally learn the Filipino style of mahjong her mother plays. “Before, when my mom would play it and mix the tiles by hand, it just didn’t seem as interesting,” she said. “But adding a table that shuffled for you and rolled the dice for you made it exciting to us.”
In America, getting a basic, plastic-framed table shipped from a factory in China costs at least $1,000 before shipping, which can easily add a few hundred more. Luxury models — styled with wooden frames, programmed not just to shuffle but also deal your hand, or outfitted with USB ports so you can charge your phone — can easily cost over $10,000.
Frank Du was one of the first people to set up a manufacturing plant for automatic tables and now exports these tables globally. When I asked Mr. Du how business was going, he smiled and said, “I’m very optimistic.”
Mr. Du told me his sales were cut in half at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and shipping issues have driven export costs much higher, but business is rebounding. Since one person who buys a table then invites three others to play, there’s a built-in marketing funnel. “Three becomes six, and six becomes nine,” he said.
So what is the draw? For one thing, the tables are a fun party trick. You press a button to open a hole in the middle of the table, and push the tiles from your last round of play into that hole. The set you just dumped churns in the table’s belly, where magnets and conveyor belts work to line up those tiles so they’re ready to pop up when you push the button again.
There’s also a practical benefit to auto tables. Annelise Heinz, a historian and the author of “Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture,” said: “These tables massively increase the rate of play. Whether or not you’re playing with money, you are getting way more rounds. You’re just cutting out that time.”
For players engaged in high-stakes gambling, those involved in intense tournament-style play, or even people who play serious games at home as an intellectual rather than social exercise, that speed is a game changer.
Even for more relaxed players, the convenience and novelty of the table can make gameplay more fun. After Ms. Brown learned the game from her mother, she and her family played the traditional way, hand-shuffling their tiles. “We realized it was indeed not as fun as using the electronic table,” she said. “It takes way longer, and you have to stack all the tiles by hand. It can be very tedious.”
In the Facebook mahjong group that Ms. Heinz follows, which has a high proportion of mostly older, Jewish women who play National Mahjong, the occasional post about someone’s new table, with a photo of their friends smiling around it, pops up.
“It’s a status symbol because they’re expensive, and this is indicative of a baby boomer generation that has aged into wealth,” Ms. Heinz said. “This isn’t like when they were playing in the ’60s and they were in their kitchenette. There’s room in this place to have an expensive table that’s only dedicated to mahjong.”
Frances Rubin, 65, plays mahjong socially with her friends in Houston twice a week. She saw someone selling an auto table on Facebook for $1,800 and was intrigued, but she couldn’t see herself shelling out that much money.
Later, a friend told her about a woman who was selling one for $600. The seller was upfront that the table was 10 years old and worked “almost all the time.” Ms. Rubin got a further $200 off because when the seller was showing her how the table worked, it didn’t. She joked, “I don’t feel like I threw the money away, but I kind of did,” adding that the table worked often enough that it was still fun to have.
It’s tricky when tables break: Few people in the U.S. know how to repair them, and parts are hard to find. Mr. Du said that when a table needs fixing, he ships customers the parts from his office in China and tries to walk the owner through the repair remotely.
Ms. Rubin now has two tables in her game room: one regular table and one automatic. When her friends come over to play, Ms. Rubin said, the women sitting at the regular table get a kick out of yelling, “We’re over here having to mix by hand — it’s just awful!”
As with so many aspects of mahjong, there’s an origin story to the automatic mahjong table. According to Masa Yaehata, the founder of Mahjong Stars and an exclusive distributor for one of Japan’s automatic table manufacturers, these tables were invented to save riichi mahjong, Japan’s popular version of the game, from rampant cheating.
“During hand-shuffling, some players have magician skills, and could swap the tiles or set up specific tiles to draw,” Mr. Yaehata said. “If they start doing this, there’s no way to beat them.” He claims that players who gambled were losing too much money and leaving the game. After auto tables were invented, players returned.
Ms. Heinz is skeptical: “I’m not saying that it’s impossible for anyone to cheat, and definitely of course a magician could. But part of how the game evolved, and why the shuffling and the wall is the way it is, is specifically to make cheating hard.”
Mr. Du and Mr. Yaehata said they were excited about the growing number of tournaments — for many styles of play — organized in the U.S. each year. Tournaments, requiring precision and efficiency, are perfect venues for auto tables. Mr. Du often provides one of his tables as a prize, drawing more entries and creating buzz.
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