![]() What does this mean for Chinese Americans, most of whom were also introduced to the game at this time? The portrayal and commodification of Chinese American femininity was broadly dovetailing with this commodification and exoticism surrounding this game. So to have a game be so enthusiastically, emphatically emphasized as a Chinese game as part of its marketing, you can see the increasing distancing from white masculinity associated with the game. That happens rapidly, and it happens in the United States because American ideas of Asian culture were associated with non-normative gender and sexuality, and particularly a kind of broad feminization of Asian people and culture. In other words, there was nothing about the initial introduction that would have indicated that it would become a game really strongly associated with femininity and with women within a few years. In its initial years in the U.S., it was marketed by white men and written about by bridge experts who were predominantly white men. In its origins, Chinese mah-jongg was a mostly but not exclusively, male gambling game. One way to see this particularly clearly is in how the game becomes associated with women during the 1920s. For these white women, it meant that even respectable middle class or wealthy matrons, not just flappers, could inhabit these new boundaries of increasingly sexualized culture and femininity, which speaks to the ways in which gender and race are intertwined and the long history of how ideas of Asian people and Asian culture have taken form.Ĭan you speak more about how mah-jongg showed the changing intersections of race and gender during this time? There’s also this performative culture around mah-jongg white women dress up in costumes to play the game in their homes, with their friends. The game becomes a way for people, but especially white Americans, to help themselves transition into this new self-consciously modern era, because of its association with connection with Asia. But it soon became played by and talked about everywhere across the country. When the fad began, it was a game associated with the American elite, people like President and First Lady Harding and Hollywood celebrities. How did it become such an influential part of American gaming and culture? This trend was driven by exporters, marketers and businessmen, particularly Joseph Park Babcock, whose mah-jongg sales company helped popularize it with American expatriates living in China before intentionally marketing it as this new, exotic and cosmopolitan consumer good to the broader American public. But in the early 1920s, it developed this international reputation, which helped spread interest in China as well. By the end of the 1800s, it was spreading in popularity in China, but mostly only in specific urban centers like Shanghai and Beijing. Mah-jongg was a relatively modern game that was developed in the mid-to-late 1800s, around the Yangtze River Delta. This tells us a lot about the making of modern American culture. In doing my initial research, I found hundreds of newspaper articles talking about this massive national fad in the 1920s, in language that touches on gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality and I immediately knew this was a much bigger story. ![]() What I found is that a lot of people have asked the question, and there was a lot of misinformation, a lot of theories, but no one had done the scholarly work to find out. ![]() But it was really my aunt, who had grown up in a strongly Jewish part of Denver in the 1950s and ‘60s, who asked the question, “Why do all my Jewish friends play mah-jongg?” that started my interest in exploring the history of the game, and particularly the history of the game in the United States. It was just really a part of the fabric of public life as well as private life. And when I was there, I saw mah-jongg everywhere. I lived for a year in southwestern China, before beginning my Ph.D. What initially piqued your interest in mah-jongg as a game, and then as the focus of your work as an academic?
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