Mahjong Tutor

Learn mahjong (Chinese rules) interactively — tile basics, win-hand puzzles, tenpai wait practice and a solo draw-and-discard trainer.

How many tiles are in a set?

The most common ruleset uses 136 tiles: three suits — Characters (萬), Bamboo and Circles — each with 9 ranks and 4 copies per rank (108 tiles), plus 7 kinds of honor tiles with 4 copies each (28 tiles). Some regional variants add 8 flower tiles (144 total) — this tool teaches the standard 136-tile game without flowers. Click any tile below to read about it.

Characters (Wan)万

A Chinese numeral (一 to 九) above the red character 萬. Read the numeral, then the suit.

Bamboo (Tiao)条

Green bamboo sticks — count them: however many sticks, that's the number.

Circles (Tong)筒

Blue circles — count the dots: however many dots, that's the number.

Honors字牌

Four winds (東南西北) + three dragons (中, 發 and the blank White).

1 Bamboo (Tiao)一条

There are 4 identical copies of every tile. The 1 of Bamboo traditionally shows a bird (the “sparrow”, 幺鸡); this tool simplifies it to a single thick stick.

Tip: identify the suit first (color and pattern type), then read or count the number. Honor tiles you simply memorize — there are only 7.

Feeling confident? Move on to the Rules tour, or jump straight into the Win check drills. (Example: 5 Characters (Wan) is the 5 of Characters.)

Long-form lessons

Prefer reading? These are the article versions of this site's lessons: