Proto-mahjong › Chinese classical › Shanghai / Hong Kong new style › Hong Kong old style › Nanyang variants
Nanyang variants
descent disputed
Sources
The documents this entry rests on, as published. Each can be opened and checked; nothing in this part is anybody’s reading of them.
Scholarship Ebashi Takashi (江橋崇). 「（七）中国国外に残る花牌麻雀」 ('Flower-tile mahjong surviving outside China'), in 麻雀牌が語る麻雀の歴史, 五 花牌の盛衰史. Japan Playing Card Museum (日本かるた文化館), 2018-2023. cross-check checked 2026-09-29
https://japanplayingcardmuseum.com/010-5-mahjong-flowertiles-asiancountries/
AI summary A one-page Japanese study of the extra flower tiles in Vietnamese, Thai, Malaysian and Singaporean sets, drawn from the sets themselves: which flowers each region's sets carry, and a hypothesis for why the south kept so many.
for this variant The only source found that treats the region as a whole, and it does not make one family of it: two clusters, one tied to Guangdong, each preserving older Chinese equipment rather than descending from Hong Kong old style. Evidence from tile sets, not rules.
Also cited on: Singapore style, Malaysian 4-player, Vietnamese classical · bibliography #159
Encyclopedia Wikipedia. "Mahjong tiles." cross-check checked 2026-09-29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong_tiles
AI summary Dates the dragon tiles: whites from replacement tiles, reds circa 1870, greens by 1890, with inner-flower jokers surviving in Vietnam.
for this variant The encyclopedia's tile-by-tile comparison across the group's members. Its Vietnamese line depends on Stanwick and Xu, so it is not independent of them on that point.
Also cited on: Proto-mahjong, Malaysian 4-player, Vietnamese classical, Vietnamese modern · bibliography #102
Guide Sloper, Tom. "FAQ 2b: Identifying a Mah-Jongg Variant." Sloperama. supporting checked 2026-09-18
https://www.sloperama.com/mjfaq/mjfaq02b.html
chart’s note Tile counts, hand sizes, flower handling and scoring for roughly 50 named variants. Primary source for most leaf nodes in this chart.
for this variant Catalogues each Southeast Asian variant on its own terms; useful as the checklist of what the group is said to contain, silent on how its members relate.
Also cited on: Chinese archaic, Late Qing style, Chinese pre-classical, Chinese classical, Shanghai / Hong Kong new style, Hong Kong old style and 45 more · bibliography #1
Guide Sloper, Tom. "FAQ 7E: Mystery Mah-Jongg Tiles." Sloperama. cross-check checked 2026-10-09
https://sloperama.com/mjfaq/special.html
AI summary Sloper's running FAQ on unusual tiles that readers send in, with photographs and correspondence. It covers Malaysian fly and face tiles and capture tiles, and reprints a 2012 exchange in which Michael Stanwick relates 聽用 joker tiles in a set bought in Singapore to Liu Yishu's 1941 description and to Changsha 王麻雀.
for this variant Extends the southern-joker line that Stanwick and Xu draw for Vietnam to a set sold in Singapore, though only as a suggestion. As a Sloperama page it is not independent of the chart's source, but the reasoning quoted is Stanwick's
Only cited here · bibliography #449
Encyclopedia Wikipedia. "Mahjong." cross-check checked 2026-10-09
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahjong
AI summary The main article's regional-variations section, which describes most branches of this tree independently of the chart's own sources.
for this variant Independent of the chart's sources. It supports a resemblance between Hong Kong play and the Singapore and Malaysian games, not descent, and dates the Southeast Asian forms only loosely
Also cited on: Proto-mahjong, Chinese classical, Hong Kong old style, Taiwanese style, Singapore style, Malaysian 4-player and 10 more · bibliography #54
Encyclopedia Wikipedia. "Scoring in Mahjong." cross-check checked 2026-10-09
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoring_in_Mahjong
AI summary Comparative scoring across Hong Kong, Chinese Classical and Taiwanese systems, including the range of minimum-point conventions and the Mandarin and Cantonese terms for a scoreless hand.
for this variant This encyclopedia comparison points to Chinese Classical rather than Hong Kong old style for Singapore scoring. It is unsourced, and it sits uneasily with the main Mahjong article's comparison to Hong Kong
Also cited on: Chinese classical, Modern HKOS, Taiwanese style, Singapore style, Zung Jung, Tui Dao Hu · bibliography #55
Encyclopedia Chinese Wikipedia: 麻将. cross-check checked 2026-10-09
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E9%BA%BB%E5%B0%86
AI summary The origin section weighs the Ningbo and Fujian-Guangdong theories and traces each origin legend (Powell 1923, the Taiping hypothesis, the Tianyi Pavilion Chen Yumen account, the 2008 CCTV Harvey diary) to where it first appears.
for this variant The Chinese encyclopedia describes the region by its equipment and lists the games by country. It knows no 南洋 family
Also cited on: Proto-mahjong, Chinese classical, Shanghai / Hong Kong new style, Singapore style, Filipino style, Vietnamese classical and 1 more · bibliography #105
Guide Phua, Edwin (posting as EP). "Mahjong, Singapore Style." Singapore Sparrows (blog), 24 February 2008. cross-check checked 2026-10-09
https://mahjongsingapore.blogspot.com/2008/02/mahjong-singapore-style.html
AI summary A Singaporean MCR player's first post on the local game and how it differs from Hong Kong Old Style: animal tiles and their 'bites', immediate payouts, the All Chows hand and a 15-tile dead wall. Includes notes on local vocabulary and cites Strauser and Evans (1964) on animal tiles.
for this variant Independent of the chart. It supports a resemblance to Cantonese play (HKOS), but its vocabulary record shows Hokkien, Malay and Taiwanese borrowings, a mixed picture rather than single descent. Its citation of a 1964 book is the earliest dated lead for animal tiles
Only cited here · bibliography #450
Scholarship Mahjong Treasures (Gregg Swain), posted as 'Kuan Yin'. "Singapore in the 1930s." 16 October 2016. cross-check checked 2026-10-09
https://www.mahjongtreasures.com/2016/10/16/singapore-in-the-1930s/
AI summary A collector's reading of a 1930s set probably made in Singapore, with sixteen flower tiles, twelve of them anti-Japanese propaganda; notes Singapore's 'capture' flower tiles as a local feature.
for this variant A collector's evidence of sets made for the Singapore market before the war, well before the 1950-80 exodus. It does not date the capture tiles, which the author describes from present-day sets
Also cited on: Singapore style · bibliography #166
Encyclopedia Mahjong Wiki. "Family Tree and Timeline." mahjong.wikidot.com. canonical checked 2026-09-29
chart’s note The decade-by-decade timeline and the branch structure this chart follows, including the caveat that each variant's evolution has been cross-cultural.
for this variant The origin of the grouping and its name, and the source's own doubt about it: the wiki draws Nanyang under HKOS while asking whether it descends from HKOS at all. Its 1950-80s dating is the claim the sources below test.
Also cited on: Chinese classical, Shanghai / Hong Kong new style, Hong Kong Taiwanese, Mainland regionals, Korean traditional, Western / British Empire style · bibliography #7
Scholarship Stanwick, Michael, and Xu Hongbing. "Flowers and Kings: An Hypothesis of their Function in Early Ma Que." The Playing-Card 37, no. 1 (2008): 29-40. Web edition at The Mahjong Tile Set. cross-check checked 2026-09-29
AI summary Reads the 'inner flower' jokers and 'outer flower' bonus tiles of the earliest sets through Liu Yishu's 1941 description of North China's 花麻雀, and, after Depaulis, matches the Vietnamese 'king' tiles described by Nguyen Xuan Mai (1950) to Changsha 王麻雀.
for this variant A journal article's case for a Vietnamese line that runs back to southern Chinese joker games rather than through Hong Kong old style, with a dated witness from 1950. In 2012 Stanwick extended the suggestion to 聽用 jokers in a set bought in Singapore (sloperama-faq-7e-mystery-tiles). The southern-joker line may therefore bear on the Malaysian-Singaporean cluster too, though only as a suggestion. Its 'mosaic evolution' directly challenges a single-parent tree
Also cited on: Vietnamese classical · bibliography #160
Encyclopedia Chinese Wikipedia: 麻雀牌 (mahjong tiles). cross-check checked 2026-09-29
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%BA%BB%E9%9B%80%E7%89%8C
AI summary History section on the early sets, the Sheng Xuanhuai set, inner and outer flowers, the northern 花麻雀 with twenty or more flowers, and the eight wild tiles of Vietnamese sets and of 王麻雀.
for this variant Groups the region by equipment, as the English article does, and adds Thailand, which the tree omits. Leans on the same Stanwick and Xu article for the jokers.
Also cited on: Proto-mahjong, Malaysian 3-player, Hua ma que, North China flower sparrow, Wang ma que, Changsha kings sparrow · bibliography #112
Collection Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore. "Mahjong tiles set." China, early 20th century. Accession no. 2021-00032, gift in memory of Dr Sylvia Hoe née Lee Seok Keng. Roots.gov.sg (National Heritage Board). cross-check checked 2026-10-09
https://www.roots.gov.sg/collection-landing/listing/1499867
AI summary The National Heritage Board's catalogue record of an export-style mahjong set made in China in the early twentieth century, now in the Asian Civilisations Museum. The description adds a one-line history: mahjong came to Singapore with immigrants from southern China.
for this variant A national museum dates the game's arrival two generations before the 1950-80 exodus that the Mahjong Wiki credits. It names southern China as the origin but no regional style, and it cites nothing
Also cited on: Singapore style · bibliography #448
Guide Remember Singapore. "4D, Mahjong and Chap Ji Kee.. History of Gambling in Singapore." Published 30 November 2011, updated 28 September 2015. cross-check checked 2026-10-09
https://remembersingapore.org/2011/11/30/4d-mahjong-and-chap-ji-kee/
AI summary A Singapore heritage blog's survey of local gambling since colonial times, with a short section comparing Singapore mahjong with other styles. The mahjong section cites no sources.
for this variant Independent of the chart: a third account of the resemblance to Hong Kong play, and one that treats Kuala Lumpur's game as distinct from Singapore's. It gives no sources
Only cited here · bibliography #451
Organisation Baba Nyonya Museum, Melaka. "Nyonya Entertainment." Tour section of the museum's website. cross-check checked 2026-10-09
https://www.babanyonyamuseum.com/nyonya-entertainment/
AI summary A Peranakan house museum's tour page on the family's pastimes: its mahjong table, cherki cards and a family member's memories of playing. It gives no dates and no rules.
for this variant Background only: mahjong in a Peranakan household in Melaka, with no date and no rule detail. It says nothing about descent
Only cited here · bibliography #452
Analysis
Written by an AI model from the sources above. It is a reading of them, not a source in its own right: every figure in it points back to a numbered source, and where the two disagree, the source is right.
Assessment
- Confidence
- disputed the descent shown is contested; the chart drew this link dashed
- Evidence
- conflicting sources disagree materially, or one source contradicts itself
Cross-comparison
What each source was read to say, set side by side. The numbers are the sources above.
| Source | Tiles | Hand | Flowers | Scoring | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | Vietnam: 160, with 24 flowers, among them 一皇-四皇 and 一后-四后, found nowhere else; Thailand: up to 172, with 32 flowers; Malaysia: 20 or 28 flowers, including cat, rat, rooster and centipede, four 飛 and four face tiles; Singapore: formerly a maker of its own sets, with 16 or 8 flowers, now mostly using Malaysian sets | — | — | — | — |
| [2] | Singaporean sets two pairs of animal tiles, four-player Malaysian four pairs, three-player Malaysian two pairs and four faces; Vietnamese and Malaysian sets two extra flower quartets; Vietnamese sets eight jokers, multiplied after 1975 | — | — | — | — |
| [3] | — | — | Raymond Lee's table of May 2016 sets out the flowers and jokers of Chinese and Southeast Asian variants. Its 'Animals' are what Sloper calls Singapore flowers | — | — |
| [4] | A set bought in Singapore had, besides the usual tiles, animal, fly, face and blank tiles and four more tiles marked 聽用 | — | — | — | — |
| [5] | — | — | Singaporean and Malaysian play add four animal bonus tiles: cat, mouse, cockerel and centipede | — | — |
| [6] | — | — | — | Singaporean scoring is said to be similar to Chinese Classical scoring, adjusted for the different tiles | — |
| [7] | Malaysian and Singaporean sets add four animal tiles (cat, rat, rooster, centipede), four fly jokers and four clown tiles to the flowers; the article gives 148 as the total | — | — | — | — |
| [8] | — | — | Four animal tiles (cat, rat, cockerel, centipede) are used as bonus tiles. A predator with its prey is a 'bite' (咬, Hokkien kā) and is paid at once. A flower pairing is called kau'in, from Malay kahwin | Tai is the local word for a double, probably taken from Taiwanese usage. The dead wall is 15 tiles, against 14 in HKOS | — |
| [9] | — | — | The 1930s set read has 16 flowers, 12 of them anti-Japanese images. It has no animal tiles | — | — |
- [3] Sloperama catalogues the individual Southeast Asian variants but uses no grouping term 'Nanyang' and asserts no common parent for them
- [10] Read again at the source. The family tree does name the group: 'Nanyang' sits beside Guangdong, Taiwanese, Sichuan and 'Others' under HKOS. But the text below the tree calls it an open question: 'the jury is out on when the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam came up with their variants. It's relatively safe to say these variants developed during the Chinese mass exodus of 1950-80s. The million dollar question is: Did these variants develop parallel to HKOS or from HKOS?' It also warns that the tree 'shouldn't be taken too literally' because 'each variant's evolution has always been cross-cultural'
- [1] Read at the source. Sorts the region's sets into two groups by their extra tiles: Guangdong, Vietnam and Thailand share the flowers 筒索萬総 and 喜元花合; Malaysia and Singapore share the 飛 jokers and the face tiles. Explains the rich southern flowers as survival: Qing-era Chinese play reached these regions, China itself then reformed its rules and equipment, and the periphery kept the old forms
- [11] Read at the source (the web edition). Reports Depaulis's observation that the extra 'king' tiles of a Vietnamese game described by Nguyen Xuan Mai (Haiphong, 1950), the four 花元喜合 or eight with 筒索萬總, match with one exception the inner-flower jokers of Changsha 王麻雀, 'grounds for considering Changsha wang ma que a Southern China variant'. Concludes that mahjong developed by 'mosaic evolution', variant forms appearing, disappearing or co-existing at different rates
- [2] Says the early inner-flower jokers 'disappeared from most of China but are still found in Vietnam', and that 'Vietnamese mahjong is related to extinct Chinese variants which used specialized jokers such as "King Mahjong" (王麻雀)', citing Stanwick and Xu
- [12] Names Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand together as the Southeast Asian sets with extra flowers, animals or jokers, and says the early inner flowers survive only in Vietnam and Thailand. Thai and four-player Malaysian sets carry four pairs of animals, Singaporean two
- [10] Read again at the source on 2026-10-09, together with the page's revision history (95 revisions, read through Wikidot's history module). The family tree no longer names Nanyang. Since revision 94 (2 October 2026) it shows Guangdong and Taiwanese under HKOS, and Sichuan and Others under Mainland. Nanyang first appeared in revision 75 (3 March 2026) as a branch of Shanghai/Hong Kong beside HKOS and Mainland, with Singaporean, Filipino and Malaysian beneath it. Revisions 92-93 (26 September 2026) moved it under HKOS beside Guangdong and Taiwanese and dropped those three children. The paragraph saying the jury is out was added in revision 90 (25 August 2026) and is still on the page. It is the only place on the page that names Vietnam
- [13] Read at the source. The Asian Civilisations Museum's record of an export-style set made in China in the early twentieth century (accession 2021-00032). It adds that mahjong reached Singapore with immigrants from southern China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is still popular among Singapore's Chinese community
- [3] Read again at the source. The catalogue still uses no group name: Filipino, Singapore, Malaysian and Vietnamese styles are separate entries. Under Filipino style it reports Dragon Chang's statement that a similar style is played in Fuzhou (Fukien)
- [4] Read at the source. Sloper's mystery-tiles FAQ reprints Michael Stanwick's email of 9 December 2012. Stanwick writes that Liu Yishu's 1941 book describes a 聽用 tile that can stand for any tile, and that eight such jokers match Changsha's 王麻雀. He adds that Thierry Depaulis suggested Vietnam's similar game is a southern variant. The same page shows Malaysian fly and face tiles
- [5] Read at the source (wikitext, 2026-10-09). Calls Singaporean and Malaysian mahjong two similar variants with much in common with Hong Kong mahjong. Describes Filipino mahjong separately. Says the game spread through Southeast Asia by the 1920s
- [6] Read at the source (wikitext, 2026-10-09). The sentence carries a clarification tag dated September 2026 that asks how the animal, clown and joker tiles are counted
- [7] Read at the source (wikitext as stored, 2026-10-09). The regional list puts Malaysian, Singaporean, Vietnamese and Philippine mahjong under 中華地區以外麻雀, beside Japan, Korea and the United States. It gives no grouping or parent among them
- [8] Read at the source. A Singaporean MCR player calls Singapore style quite similar to Hong Kong Old Style (Cantonese) mahjong, with some salient differences. With no governing body, some groups play closer to HKOS. He cites Strauser and Evans (1964) for a different, capture rule for animal tiles that is not used in Singapore
- [9] Read again at the source for this node. The author says Singapore's own version is played with capture flower tiles (cat and mouse, rooster and centipede, among others). With a stated caveat, she takes the set, whose case names Singapore and Shanghai, to have been made in Singapore
- [14] Read at the source. A Singapore heritage blog's history of local gambling compares Singapore mahjong with other styles: animals count as tai and play ends at the last 15 tiles. It says Singapore mahjong most resembles Hong Kong mahjong, superstitions included, and describes KL mahjong as usually three-player with jokers
- [15] Read at the source. The museum's page on Nyonya pastimes says mahjong and cherki were both well loved by the Nyonyas, and recalls a family member who played mahjong with relatives as a way to socialise. It is undated and says nothing about tiles or rules
Reading it
The node's own source has withdrawn it. The Mahjong Wiki's revision history shows 'Nanyang' entering its family tree on 3 March 2026 as a branch beside HKOS, with Singaporean, Filipino and Malaysian beneath it. It moved under HKOS on 26 September and left the tree on 2 October 2026. What remains is a paragraph added on 25 August: the jury is out, the variants probably date from the exodus of 1950-80, and whether they grew from HKOS or alongside it is open. No other source read names a Nanyang family, and the sources conflict on its parentage. Wikipedia's main article, Phua and Remember Singapore liken Singapore play to Hong Kong or Cantonese mahjong. Wikipedia's scoring article says Chinese Classical. Stanwick, quoted by Sloper, ties jokers in a Singapore-bought set to Changsha 王麻雀, and Sloper reports a Filipino-like game in Fuzhou. The sources conflict on dating too. The Asian Civilisations Museum has mahjong arriving with southern Chinese immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Swain reads a 1930s set made for Singapore. No source dates the animal tiles; the earliest lead is Strauser and Evans (1964). Still wanted: that book, the 1924 Straits Times item and the old wiki's Malaysian page.
Looked for, not found
- Official rules No body governs the group or a shared rule set. General web searches in en, zh and ms found no Southeast Asian association's rules; each member's own rules belong on its page
- Tournament rules No regional event playing a shared Southeast Asian rule set was found. Singapore's community-centre tournament sheets belong to the Singapore page
- Law No regional law. Singapore's and Malaysia's gambling acts were read in the pass of 2026-09-29 and name no rules of play. Philippine and Indonesian law were not searched, since no statute would settle descent
- Forum Lowyat.net's thread on Singapore and Malaysian rules and sets answered a Cloudflare challenge (403) on 2026-10-09, and Reddit and BoardGameGeek refuse automated readers. mahjongarchives.tripod.com, which held a 1998 newsgroup post on Filipino play cited by Sloperama, no longer resolves. No forum discussion of the group's descent was found
- Commercial Retailers' pages on Singaporean animal-tile sets (for example My Fair Mahjong) and app listings for Singapore-Malaysia play turned up in search. None speaks to descent or dating, so none was read
Known, not yet read
Sources that look worth having but could not be read for this entry. If you can reach one, it can be read and added. Every variant’s list is gathered on Missing sources.
- Rulebook Strauser, Kitty, and Lucille Evans. Mah Jong, Anyone? A Manual of Modern Play. Tuttle, 1964 — Phua (2008) cites it for animal tiles used with a capture rule. It would be the earliest dated rules text for the group's best-known tiles
Where: Internet Archive, mahjonganyoneman0000stra (2002 printing, lending only); libraries; Sloper's 2006 revision, Mah Jong, Anyone?: A Manual of Western Play. Tried: Internet Archive advanced search on 2026-10-09 found the item, but it is access-restricted with no full text - Journalism The Straits Times (Singapore), 24 December 1924, 'Origin of Mah Jongg' — The earliest Singapore press item on mahjong found in this pass, cited by Chinese Wikipedia's 麻将 article. It would date the game's presence in Singapore decades before the 1950-80 exodus the Mahjong Wiki credits
Where: NewspaperSG, article straitstimes19241224.2.5; the Wayback capture (5 June 2012) of the old newspapers.nl.sg URL. Tried: On 2026-10-09 NewspaperSG answered HTTP 202 with an empty body, a script challenge on the library's side. web.archive.org connections were reset through the research proxy, a failure on our side - Encyclopedia Mahjong Wiki (the old site, before 2025), 'Malaysian Overview' (rules:malaysian-overview), and its page on Singapore play — The Mahjong Wiki's pages on Singapore and Malaysia exist only on the old site, since the new wiki has no Southeast Asian pages. They are the wiki's only account of the members of the group it once named
Where: Wayback Machine capture of 14 May 2025 (https://web.archive.org/web/20250514085053/http://mahjong.wikidot.com/rules:malaysian-overview); the Singapore page's name is not known. Tried: The live wiki's page list (7 pages, 2026-10-09) has no Southeast Asian pages. archive.org's availability API listed the Malaysian capture and found none for five guessed Singapore page names, then answered 429. web.archive.org connections were reset through the research proxy on about 25 attempts on 2026-10-09, a failure on our side - Historical Nguyen Xuan Mai, Le mah-jong: guide complet. Jeu avec les 8 rois supplémentaires. Haiphong: the author, 1950 — The earliest dated rulebook for any member of the group. Stanwick and Xu use it to tie Vietnamese play to Changsha 王麻雀, and its date tests the wiki's 1950-80s origin
Where: Library catalogues (BnF, WorldCat); cited in Stanwick and Xu (2008). Tried: No digitised copy or catalogue record found by web search (2026-09-29). Internet Archive advanced search found no item (2026-10-09) - Collection Mahjong Museum (Takeshobo, Chiba), 「亞洲麻雀」 page on Asian sets — Photographs of Vietnamese, Thai and Malaysian sets, cited by both Wikipedias. It holds the one photograph of a Thai set that a Sloperama correspondent could find
Where: http://museum.takeshobo.co.jp/houmotsu/world/asia/index.html (Wayback 2021-01-21). Tried: The live page and the Wayback capture both returned nothing (2026-09-29). On 2026-10-09 the host museum.takeshobo.co.jp did not resolve from the research environment, and web.archive.org was unreachable through the proxy
Where it was searched
Every place the search checklist names for this variant’s languages, and what each gave, including nothing. The last full pass was on 2026-10-09.
Names searched: English Nanyang variants, Nanyang, Southeast Asian mahjong, Southeast Asian variants; Chinese 南洋麻將, 南洋麻将, 南洋麻雀, 新馬麻將, 新马麻将; Malay mahjong Nanyang, mahjong Asia Tenggara, mahjong Malaysia, mahjung.
25 places searched
- General web search — Standard WebSearch, 2026-10-09. English: NLB/Infopedia history of mahjong in Singapore; Singapore animal-tile origins; Peranakan mahjong sets; Malaysian mahjong and Hokkien/Cantonese origins; Straits Chinese mahjong of the 1920s-30s; forum talk on animal tiles; Straits Times/CNA features. Chinese: 南洋麻將 歷史 新加坡 馬來西亞 動物牌 起源; 新马麻将 猫 老鼠 公鸡 蜈蚣 花牌 由来; 馬來西亞 麻將 貓 老鼠 雞 蜈蚣 由來 歷史 星洲 東方日報; 马来西亚 麻将 飞牌 动物牌 历史, plus one extended query (新加坡 麻雀 历史 早期华人 南来 广东 福建 玩法 动物牌 研究). Malay: sejarah permainan mahjong Malaysia masyarakat Cina. Read from these: the Roots.gov.sg record, the Baba Nyonya Museum page, Phua 2008, Remember Singapore 2011 and Mahjong Treasures 2016. Readable but not read (lean budget): ogiuemaniax 'Thoughts on Singapore Mahjong' (2011 blog); MustShareNews on home-drawn animal tiles; Malaysiakini 'Mahjong: boon or bane?'; WOPC's page on Malaysian mahjong cards (wopc.co.uk/malaysia/mahjongg); BiblioAsia 'Desperate Housewives: The Lure of Chap Ji Kee' (2015, on gambling, not mahjong); Kontan and Katadata lifestyle pieces on mahjong in Indonesia; Roots.gov.sg record 2019-00103, a mid-century Singapore set. No source in any language named a Nanyang family, and none dated the animal tiles
- Wikidata — The wbsearchentities API answered 429 on 2026-10-09. Wikipedia page properties give Q109347642 for zh 馬來西亞麻雀 and Q3454294 for en 'Scoring in Mahjong', where 'Singaporean mahjong' redirects. No item for a Nanyang or Southeast Asian group was found
- Wikipedia, in every declared language — English: Mahjong and Scoring in Mahjong read (wikitext). No articles at Malaysian mahjong, Filipino mahjong, Mahjong in Singapore or Singapore mahjong. Chinese: 麻将 read. No articles at 新加坡麻將, 南洋麻將, 新馬麻將 or 菲律賓麻將. 菲律賓麻雀 is linked from 麻将 but the API answered 429 when it was fetched. Its 1924 Straits Times citation goes to wanted. Malay: Mahjung read. It is a general article with nothing on Malaysian play beyond a category. The API rate-limited the shared address (429) several times on 2026-10-09
- The sources' own references, and who cites them — One round. From Sloperama FAQ 2b: Raymond Lee's 2016 table (an image, not quotable); Stanwick and Xu (already observed); Sloper's mystery-tiles FAQ (read); mahjongarchives.tripod.com/post/1998/9809-03.htm on Filipino play (the host did not resolve on 2026-10-09). From Phua 2008: Strauser and Evans 1964 (wanted). From zh Wikipedia 麻将: Straits Times, 24 December 1924 (wanted). Second-round leads, unread: Liu Yishu's 1941 book on mahjong technique, which Stanwick cites for 聽用; Celia Ching, Amazing Mahjong (Sloper's book for Singapore style); Dragon Chang's book, for the Fuzhou remark; the Pinang Gazette notice of a mahjong party, 25 October 1938; Sloper's family-tree image (mjfaq/tree.htm) and his 2002 Smithsonian map. Forward citation was not tried: OpenAlex wants a key
- Internet Archive full-text search — Advanced search (2026-10-09) found Strauser and Evans, Mah jong, anyone? (mahjonganyoneman0000stra, a 2002 printing, lending only, no full text). It found no item for Nguyen Xuan Mai's 1950 manual. The full-text search endpoint answered HTTP 400 to two queries
- Wayback Machine — On 2026-10-09 every connection to web.archive.org through the research proxy was reset or closed mid-exchange (ws_closed_mid_exchange), over about 25 attempts across the session; this is a failure on our side. archive.org's availability API listed a capture of the old wiki's rules:malaysian-overview (14 May 2025). It returned nothing for five guessed Singapore page names, then answered 429. WebFetch refuses web.archive.org. The old wiki pages and the 2012 capture of the 1924 Straits Times article stay wanted. The Takeshobo museum host no longer resolves
- Google Books — Not searched: the API answered 429 in earlier passes, and the lean budget went to the wiki's revision history. Strauser and Evans (1964) and Celia Ching's Amazing Mahjong are the books to look up
- HathiTrust full-text search — Not searched: full-text search is behind a Cloudflare challenge, and no title specific to Southeast Asian mahjong was known for a catalogue lookup
- WorldCat — Not searched in this pass. Nguyen Xuan Mai (Haiphong, 1950) remains the title to look up; the earlier pass found no record by web search
- Scholarly indexes — Crossref works search, 2026-10-09, for mahjong with Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines and Southeast Asia history. Nothing on Southeast Asian mahjong: the hits were Heinz (2021) on American mahjong and a study of social gambling among older Chinese immigrants in the US. The Malaysia query returned an unreadable response. OpenAlex needs a key; Google Scholar was not tried
- YouTube — Not searched: lean pass. Explainers of Singapore and Malaysian rules belong to the child nodes and would not settle descent
- English-language forums — Lowyat.net thread 4859938 on Singapore/Malaysian rules and sets answered a Cloudflare challenge (403) on 2026-10-09, the site's refusal. Reddit and BoardGameGeek refuse automated readers. Sloperama's bulletin board was read only through the 2012 exchange quoted in the mystery-tiles FAQ
- Mahjong reference sites — Mahjong Wiki: the home page was re-read, and its 95 revisions were listed and the relevant ones read through Wikidot's page-history module. The new wiki has no Southeast Asian pages (system:list-all-pages, 7 pages, 2026-10-09); the old wiki's pages survive only on Wayback (wanted). Sloperama: FAQ 2b and the mystery-tiles FAQ (special.html) were read. The Malaysian page was skimmed for origin statements and has none. The old FAQ 7E address mjfaq07e.html returns 404
- App and platform listings — Not searched: app listings for Singapore and Malaysian play, such as GoPlayPlay's 新馬版三人麻將, are on the child nodes and say nothing about descent
- English-language newspaper archives — On 2026-10-09 NewspaperSG search answered curl with HTTP 202 and an empty body (a script challenge, the library's side), as did Infopedia's eresources pages; not searched further. Search results pointed to the Straits Times of 24 December 1924, 'Origin of Mah Jongg' (wanted), and the Pinang Gazette of 25 October 1938, with a bridge-and-mahjong party (a lead). Trove and Chronicling America were not searched: the group is Southeast Asian
- Statutes published in English — Not searched again. Singapore's Gambling Control Act 2022 materials and Malaysia's Act 289 were read in the pass of 2026-09-29 (gra-2022-gcb-second-reading, mha-2022-gcb-wrap-up, my-act289); none names rules of play. Philippine law was not searched: no statute would settle descent
- Baidu search and Tieba — Not reachable as such; the general tool's Chinese queries stand in for it (see web-search). No mainland page on 南洋 mahjong or Southeast Asian animal tiles turned up
- Baidu Baike — Not searched: it answers 403 to automated readers. Its English entry on Malaysia Mahjong (baidu-malaysia-mahjong) is already in the bibliography for the Malaysian node
- Chinese Q&A and community sites — Not searched: Zhihu and Xiaohongshu put login walls in front of automated readers, and no search result pointed to a discussion there of where 南洋 mahjong came from
- WeChat public-account articles — Not searched: Sogou has no open search API, and Singapore and Malaysian Chinese writing on the game is more likely to be in the local press
- Bilibili — Not searched: lean pass. Video explainers would describe rules, not descent
- Pre-modern and Republican Chinese texts — Not searched. Republican-era texts on Changsha 王麻雀 and Liu Yishu (1941) are second-round leads; ctext asks automated readers not to scrape it
- Chinese-language scholarship — Not searched: CNKI and Airiti full texts are by subscription, and the Chinese web searches turned up no title on Southeast Asian mahjong to look up
- Chinese-language newspaper archives — NewspaperSG's Chinese papers sit behind the same 202 empty-body challenge (2026-10-09). The Malaysian Chinese dailies (Sin Chew, China Press, Oriental Daily) were searched through the general tool with 麻將/麻将 and the animal names; no article on the game's history turned up. The Hong Kong library was not searched: not a Hong Kong game
- Statutes published in Chinese — Not searched: Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and PRC statutes do not govern play in Southeast Asia
In the tree
Descends from Hong Kong old style, as the source chart draws it.
Caveat from the source chart
Drawn with a dashed connector in the source chart: no source establishes this descent.
Descends into
- Singapore style — 148 tiles, animal flowers
- Malaysian 3-player — 84 tiles, one suit
- Malaysian 4-player — 164 tiles, 24 flowers
- Filipino style — 16-tile hand, honours as flowers
- Vietnamese classical — 160 tiles, 8 jokers
- Pong — Malaya, 120 tiles, Dobree 1955