1 Bamboo

Did you know

• The oldest surviving sets, from around 1872, show no bird but a 青蚨 qīngfú, an insect from Chinese legend whose name was also slang for copper coins. By 1909 a Shanghai set showed a flying swallow.²³
• One explanation of the bird: early tiles showed a single string of coins with a red knot, and carvers turned the knot into a head, the coins into a body and the loose string into wings. Japanese Wikipedia calls the reason unknown.⁴⁵¹
• Sets have drawn cranes, sparrows, swallows, roosters, chicks, parrots and pheasants here, and some no bird at all: a bamboo shoot or a fish. Chinese players call it 幺雞, "little chicken", among many other names.¹⁴
• 麻雀 means sparrow, and it is the game's own name in Japanese (mājan). The popular story is that shuffled tiles chatter like sparrows; Japanese Wikipedia thinks the name more likely grew out of 馬弔, an older card game.⁶⁷
• Its bird has red in it, which keeps it out of ryuuiisou, the all-green yakuman.

At the table

• A terminal fits in only one sequence, so it is the hardest number tile to use and often the first to go.
• It is suji to the 4: once an opponent has discarded , a two-sided wait on the 1 would leave them furiten, which makes it a safer discard against them.
• It is dora when is the dora indicator. Turned up as the indicator itself, it makes dora.

Yaku it can help

• Chanta a terminal or honor in every set
• Junchan a terminal in every set
• Honroutou terminals and honors only
• Chinroutou terminals only
• Kokushi Musou one of the thirteen orphans
• Chinitsu one suit only
• Chuuren Poutou the nine gates, all in one suit

Where the bamboo come from

The sticks aren't bamboo. They are strings of coins: 索 means rope, and copper cash were threaded through their square holes in strings of a hundred. The bumps along each stick are the coins on the string.⁵⁴¹

Joseph Park Babcock, whose 1920 Rules of Mah-Jongg are the earliest mahjong rules known in America, took the bumps for bamboo knots, and the English name stuck.⁵⁶

Sources

1. 麻雀牌, Wikipedia (Japanese) Japanese
2. 二 一九世紀の中国麻雀牌（プロト・マージャン）, p. 3: 19th-century tile designs, Japan Playing Card Museum (日本かるた文化館) Japanese
3. 二 一九世紀の中国麻雀牌（プロト・マージャン）, p. 7: キューリン牌 (the Culin set, Shanghai, 1909), Japan Playing Card Museum (日本かるた文化館) Japanese
4. 麻雀牌, Wikipedia (Chinese) Chinese
5. Mahjong tiles, Wikipedia
6. Mahjong, Wikipedia
7. 麻雀, Wikipedia (Japanese) Japanese