Proto-mahjong › Chinese classical › Shanghai / Hong Kong new style › Mainland regionals › Beijing style
Beijing style
drawn wild tile
Cross-comparison
conflicting — sources disagree materially, or one source contradicts itself
| Source | Tiles | Hand | Flowers | Scoring | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | 144 (assumed) | 13, out on 14 | unknown; the first picked tile dictates the wild tile, by similar logic to Japanese dora | no minimum; 1 point per pung, 2 per kong (non-winners score for kongs too); kong doubles winner's score; only three special hands | winners and kong holders |
| [2] | 136, three suits plus four winds and three dragons | — | the eight flower tiles, four seasons and four flowers, are NOT used | no open set or kong may contain a wild tile | — |
- [1] information from Laurent Mahe
- [2] each player builds a wall 17 tiles wide and two high, which is 136 tiles across four walls, confirming the count arithmetically. The face-up tile is the wild indicator and the four tiles of the same suit one greater in number are wild; a nine makes the ones wild, a wind makes the next wind in East-South-West-North order wild, a dragon the next in Red-Green-White order. A wild tile substitutes for any tile in a winning hand
Reading it
A second source settles what the first could not, and contradicts it. Sloperama assumed 144 tiles and recorded flower handling as unknown; the blog it cites states 136 tiles and that the eight flower and season tiles are not used, and its 17-wide two-high wall confirms 136 arithmetically. Prefer 136 and no flowers. The wild-tile mechanism the chart summarises as 'drawn wild tile' is corroborated and much more specific than either summary: the indicator is face up, and the wild tiles are the four one greater in number, wrapping from nine to one.
Sources
Sloper, Tom. "FAQ 2b: Identifying a Mah-Jongg Variant." Sloperama. canonical checked 2026-09-18
Tile counts, hand sizes, flower handling and scoring for roughly 50 named variants. Primary source for most leaf nodes in this chart.
https://www.sloperama.com/mjfaq/mjfaq02b.html
Also cited on: Chinese archaic, Chinese pre-classical, Chinese classical, Shanghai / Hong Kong new style, Hong Kong old style, Modern HKOS and 43 more · bibliography #1
Beijing Mahjong Rules (kzpn200 blog). cross-check checked 2026-09-18
The Beijing game in detail, cited by Sloperama's catalogue: 136 tiles, no flower or season tiles, and the wild-tile mechanism worked from a face-up indicator.
https://kzpn200.blogspot.com/2016/03/beijing-mahjong-rules.html
Only cited here · bibliography #59