Roughly 30% of China’s population plays mahjong. That’s over 500 million people… But what surprised me wasn’t the amount of people that play mahjong here. Rather, it was the distinct, negative outlook that people have toward the game. It’s even exempt from the Chinese Cultural Heritage list because of this collective “distaste”, even though the association has enlisted analgous games such as Weiqi (Go) and Xiangqi (Chinese Chess). So I took to the parlors to understand why.