On a Thursday night in the back room of a dessert shop in the Garden Oaks/Oak Forest neighborhood, 16 women, all from different walks of life, sip wine and nibble on sweets while leaning over mounds of brightly colored game tiles, arranged by suit into separate piles. Then, the lesson begins. 

A hush falls over the room as the founding members of Mocha Mahj—Ashley Bailey, Veronica Gordon Murphy, and Megan “Dani” Craigman—dive into the basics of American mahjong, explaining tile suits and the rules of the game. Their goal? To make a centuries-old game fun, approachable, and judgment-free.

Sparked by Bailey’s interest, she and her friends began playing American mahjong earlier this year. “I have been seeing it with a lot of my high school friends and college friends,” Bailey explains. She initially joined a local Facebook group and learned how to play from a group of teachers, who later invited her friends over for a private lesson. After a few rounds, Bailey, Murphy, and Craigman were hooked. They formed Mocha Mahj shortly after, hoping to teach others in the community how to play and bring some representation into the mix. “We started playing and thought that a lot of people we knew would really like to play it,” Bailey says. “People who look like us.” 

The trio christened themselves as Mocha Mahj, a “catchy and fun” nickname that also reflects who they are as Black women. “Hence, the ‘mocha,’” Bailey chuckles. Mocha Mahj recognizes that they aren’t exactly well represented in the game space. Traditional mahjong, on one hand, is a major tenet of the Asian community. American mahjong, on the other hand, they explain, was popularized mainly by New York City’s Jewish community. In Houston, American mahjong teachers have not yet diversified.

“We just thought there should be options of teachers who aren’t white,” Craigman said. 

Now, American mahjong is having a moment. According to Google Trends, interest has surged nationwide and in Houston suburbs such as Bellaire, Spring Valley Village, and West University Place. Axios Houston reported that online searches for “mahjong events” increased by 867 percent between 2023 and 2024. Even celebrities like former actress and Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, as well as Today hosts Savannah Guthrie and Jenna Bush Hager, have been spotted playing. Locally, groups like Mocha Mahj are leading the charge, teaching members of the community a game that’s storied but trending like it’s brand-new. 

In many ways, Mocha Mahj reflects a broader cultural wave: The game, which originated in China in the 1800s, remains a beloved pastime across the Asian diaspora. Global variations exist—from Taiwanese and Hong Kong versions to Vietnamese—each with differing rules and methods of winning. In its traditional version, mahjong is marked by thick white-and-emerald-green tiles that are shuffled (swirled), discarded, and matched to create winning suit combinations. 

Though a casual game, mahjong has an oft-controversial reputation in Chinese culture. For many, the game is considered a social event, played among family members and homemakers during parties or throughout the day. For others, it’s a leisurely activity long associated with gambling debts, organized crime, and underground dens. Its complex cultural status, mixed with its negative reputation, has even spawned a micro-genre of Hong Kong films, including gambling-centered plots like Fat Choi Spirit and the 1981 classic, Mahjong Heroes.

In the US, however, mahjong arrived with fewer cultural hang-ups. In the 1920s, American businessman Joseph Park Babcock helped popularize the game among American expatriates in China through his mahjong sales company, according to Time magazine. He later introduced a simplified version in the States. By the 1930s, the game caught on with the Jewish community, thanks in part to a woman named Dorothy Meyerson, who, along with other members, helped standardize the rules and create another simplified version. In 1937, she formed the National Mah Jongg League in New York City, and “American mahjong” quickly spread throughout New York’s elite and within the Jewish community. 

The popularity of American mahjong continued to grow, eventually reaching mainstream status in America within the past decade. The game’s latest revival got a boost in 2018, when the blockbuster movie Crazy Rich Asians hit theaters. Toward the film’s end (spoiler alert), protagonist Rachel Chu, played by actress Constance Wu, begins a round of mahjong with her boyfriend’s disapproving mother, Eleanor Sung-Young, played by the iconic Michelle Yeoh. In the penultimate scene, Rachel sacrifices her winning tile to allow Eleanor’s victory—a metaphor for Rachel’s relationship with Eleanor’s son, Nick. “The movie… perpetuated it, and it just kind of became a thing,” says Bailey Fritcher, who attended her first mahjong 101 session with Mocha Mahj. Like Fritcher, many Mocha Mahj first-timers credit the movie with repopularizing the game, explaining how younger audiences have taken up the reins. 

In Houston, mahjong has become a popular activity, with establishments such as the YMCA, the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston, and the Chinese Community Center offering games and tournaments. Thanks to social media, the game has become an online trend as much as a community builder. “I’ve been seeing it a lot over the last three-ish years,” Fritcher says. “A lot of people have been getting into it.”

Mocha Mahj saw the momentum firsthand. The trio honed their skills after learning to play themselves in March 2025. They hosted games at each other’s homes regularly, but it wasn’t until a friend in Atlanta, Georgia, asked Mocha Mahj to host a private lesson—their first paid gig. Still, the group is not about profit; it’s about creating community one lesson at a time.

Teaching mahjong in a comfortable, judgment-free zone among friends is the primary motivation, the trio explains. Their classes are designed to be unintimidating, with smaller group sizes, printed guides, and ample one-on-one time to ask questions and learn more thoroughly—a far cry from the trial-by-fire teaching method most people experience.

“When we learned, it wasn’t as friendly or as comfortable as we would’ve liked,” Murphy says. “And so, what we’re trying to do is hopefully to make spaces where people feel comfortable making mistakes and having fun.”

As the Mocha Mahj team circles the room, players stop and ask questions about the game, reading through the guides. Tiles clack together as the novice players rearrange their lines, discarding unwanted tiles in the center. Soon enough, one player emerges victorious.

“Mahjong!”