Mahjong is a traditional Chinese game that requires skill, strategy, and calculation, as well as a certain degree of luck in order to defeat your opponents. It is a good leisure for people relieving boredom and gathering with friends. However, Mahjong is also popularly played as gambling which may lead to plenty of issues. Therefore, playing mahjong has always been a debate among people. The aim of this paper is to discuss the pros & cons of playing Mahjong in order to figure out whether playing mahjong is a good entertainment or not.
About Mahjong Mahjong is a popular game for four players that originated in China. The name of “ Mahjong” was based on its Chinese name “?? máquè” which means a sparrow. It was not an ordinary game in the ancient China as it was played by the royal. However, it has become very common and popular nowadays, especially among the Chinese communities. As long as you get exposure to the Chinese community, you would hear the sound of “ sparrow”. The fascination of Mahjong is due to its complex and variability, which will never let people get bored. Player will draw or pick up a tile and then discard one of his own. The object is to create melds, either four or five, and a pair depends on which type of mahjong game you are playing. A player wins when he completes his hand, usually consisting of 14 or 17 tiles.
Pros of playing mahjong Playing mahjong requires good mathematic calculations, strategies and memory skill. This is the good benefit for people, it keeps their mind occupied and well-used. Anyone who plays the game often knew it is very much about strategy and mathematics, without any calculators. So, playing mahjong can help with memory skills and help to keep your mind sharp, similar to the way puzzle’s effect on people. Keeping your mind sharp by exercising it through games helps people react to situations and make decisions faster. In some cases, it helps reduce dementia, lost of memory and other mental illnesses.
Playing mahjong is also a good leisure that provides a platform for people gathering to talk of everything under the sun and helps people to establish friendship with each other. Especially for elders, social intercourse is quite important for them. As senior will always feel disheartened if they become isolated. Mahjong is one activity that can give them a social outlet with people their own age. They can meet friends or be at a relative’s home to play, or they can play in a senior center or even a nursing home.
In addition, due to the use of brain and concentrating for the game will make people feel the time flies faster. So playing mahjong is a good activity for killing time as well. For those people who do not like outdoor activity, playing mahjong would also be a good choice for them, since it is a static but exciting indoor activity.
Cons of playing mahjong On the other side, mahjong also creates negative impact to those who get addicted with it. As playing mahjong requires players to sit for long time, and their neck is often bent forward, so it may lead to some spinal problem. The heavy burden on the waist and the squeezing to muscle nerve may easily lead to back pain as well. Also, people who like to play mahjong are relatively easy to get myopia as they need to stare on the tiles that opponents discarded in order not to miss any tiles they needed. Furthermore, the over excitement or sadness caused by win and loss may lead to stroke, heart disease and so on.
Some people even say that mahjong is an evil game as it involves money and easy to be hooked with the game or simply be addicted. Though sometimes it’s played just for fun, mahjong is mostly used for gambling. Once people learned the rules of this game and start playing, they often get addicted to it. Some people even became problem gamblers because of playing mahjong. They just can’t control themselves to stop playing and bet more than what they can afford, then eventually cause economic problem. Some problem gamblers might take the road of delinquency because of losing lots of money. They take risk to steal, rob or kidnap or commit any unlawful crimes in order to have money for gambling again.
In addition to the above, addiction in playing mahjong might create family issue as well. If the husband or wife spends too much time on playing mahjong, they may have less time to take care of their family. So that could lead to dissatisfaction with each other, resulting in disputes; Children will thus easily go astray because of lack of care and loss of family warmth. Some people are even worse by putting their family into financial hardship if they are the breadwinner of the family due to the losing by playing mahjong. Over time, this inevitably leads to serious problem toward their family.
Conclusion Mahjong indeed is a very good entertainment where we can well train our brains because it is a game of strategy, skills, calculation and a certain degree of chance but it must only be played as a family-friendly social activity where good relationships are built and added to that the killing some boring time. There is always a limit for everything, even a good thing may turn into bad if the amount is excessive. For example, eating is good for us as it gives energy and nutrition to our bodies, but we still can’t eat too much otherwise it may affect our intestinal health, lead to stomachache. Typically, most of those cons of playing mahjong occurred are due to addiction. When one gets hooked or addicted and is playing mahjong in a gambler’s way then problem occurs either socially or financially. So, I think that playing mahjong should be a good entertainment as long as people do not indulge too much.
