drag to orbit · scroll to zoom · click a node to open it
Mahjong variant family tree
61 documented rulesets, filed by descent. Every entry records what each source was read to say, and how far those sources actually agree.
- Roots / ancestral
- Chinese
- Taiwanese
- Southeast Asian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Western / American
41corroborated
7conflicting
7partial
4single-source
2unsupported
What this is
A collection of material gathered from around the web, filed by variant, so each claim's origin can be checked. The tree records descent as the source chart claims it — not a judgement that the claim is correct. Where a claim is weak, the entry says so.
What the chart admits about itself
- Guangdong was influenced first by Hong Kong, later by Taiwanese; the arrow should run both ways.
- Mainland regionals began on a Chinese Classical frame and later adopted HKOS's simplified scoring.
- All Pairs and All Green flowed backwards from Western Mah Jong into most other modern rulesets, meaning the
usbranch fed thecnbranch, which no tree layout shows. - The eleven mainland nodes stand in for a hundred-plus real variants, most undocumented in English.
- Several entries (Shenzhen, Tui Dao Hu, Fujian) rest on a single informant report.
- No source establishes how Korean 104-tile mahjong descends from anything; the link is a placeholder.
- Filipino style sits under Nanyang despite a 16-tile hand resembling Taiwanese. The distinguishing test is that Filipino play treats winds and dragons as flowers.