An Old Tradition Clicks With Students
Ancient Game of Mah-Jongg Breaks the Ice, Builds Friendships Among 6th-Graders

By Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 26, 2006

Lunchtime at Thomas Jefferson Middle School. Cup of french fries? Check. Mini-carton of chocolate milk? Check. Small plastic tiles embossed with dragons and flowers?

Check.

For one group of Arlington sixth-graders, the game of mah-jongg is so cool that they'll give up their lunch period to play it. They are about half a century younger than typical players of the ancient Chinese game, which sort of resembles gin rummy but is a lot more complex. But they are as enthusiastic as if they had invented it themselves.

"Who's going to be with who?" they asked as they chose teammates and grabbed seats around a table in the classroom of Sandy Tevelin, who introduced them to the game (pronounced MAH-zhahn) early in the school year.

"I'll be with Maddy," said Lauren Montana, 11, one of seven students playing Wednesday.

Then the game began, and their sentences started to contain such words as "Bam" and "Dot" and "Crack" -- incomprehensible to those not fluent in mah-jongg-ese.

Tevelin looked on, smiling. For a dozen years, she has been offering her sixth-graders the chance to learn the game that in the United States is more commonly associated with Chinese or Jewish women of a certain age. Some years, none takes her up on it; some years, it's more important for them to spend the 35-minute lunch block in the cafeteria with their friends. But every few years there will be a group of sixth-graders for whom the game clicks.

And sticks. Tevelin has former students, now juniors in college, who come back to play with her. And, as she reminds her students, it is an activity they can do for the rest of their lives.

"I ask them, 'When you're 40, are you going to want to play UNO? Are you going to want to play Connect Four?' And they say, 'Ooh, no.' But they're going to want to play mah-jongg, because it's . . . a grown-up game.

The game, in which the students try to build a winning hand using 13 tiles they are dealt or trade for others, involves a lot of skill and strategy and memorization of rules. Tevelin introduced the rules incrementally, adding a new one every few days until the students absorbed them all.

After the french fries were consumed, the game heated up. Tiles clacked on the table as the students answered a reporter's questions about why they decided to learn to play.

"Well, she told us the story about the original people who play mah-jongg," said Gino Rodriguez, 11, referring to Tevelin's earlier cohorts.

"It sounded interesting, and she showed us the tiles and then we decided to play," said Glenn Kinsman, 12. "And then people from other classes started coming."

Tevelin herself did not learn the game that her grandmother and mother played. "At the pool in the summer, we swam and all the mothers played mah-jongg," she said. "I remember, as a child, listening to the clickety-clack of the tiles on the table." She learned about 20 years ago and is now in a regular mah-jongg group.

Besides being something they can continue through their lives, she said, the game is a good ice-breaker for sixth-graders just entering the school.

"Two girls who for the first part of the year did not say a word to anybody, mah-jongg has given them a voice," she said. "Kids who did not talk before are talking now. Kids who were not friends before got to know each other because of mah-jongg."

Tevelin has shown them her grandmother's set -- a worn snakeskin case containing yellowed tiles. Several of the students have found their own sets on e-Bay, and some have tried to teach their families to play.

Gino's grandmother played in the Philippines. But some had never tried it.

"It was kind of hard to teach them," said Brooke Rippy, 12.

"My dad still can't pronounce it," Glenn added.

Melvin Argueta, 11, said that his sister, who is 16, likes the fact that he plays, because "I can finally do something that she can't."

This month, Britanya Rapp, who goes to the Langston-Brown Multipurpose Senior Center in Arlington, watched them play and now hopes to arrange for the children to come teach her and senior citizens there who are interested in learning the game.

Rapp's grandmother, who was from Berlin, used to play. "It's sort of like I don't want it to die out," she said. "It was really a part of my family."

Seeing the children inspired her to learn, she added. "They were talking to me about how they're going to continue to play when they're older. . . . And here we are, seniors, and I don't know where the people are who know how to play. Mah-jongg can give us interaction and camaraderie."

Back in Tevelin's classroom, the game ended abruptly.

"We call!" cried Maddy Brehaut, 12. "Mah-jongg!"

Everyone else assessed how close they'd been. Brooke displayed her team's tiles, an assortment of colors and designs that had not won but evinced a certain elegance.

"We went for the prettiest hands," she joked.