5 Bamboo

Did you know

• Its middle stick is red, which keeps it out of ryuuiisou, the all-green yakuman.
• In Mahjong Sushi one of the four is the red 5 of bamboo, red all over.

At the table

• It fits in three sequences, the most any tile can.
• It is suji to the 2 and 8: once an opponent has discarded and , a two-sided wait on the 5 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

• Tanyao simples only
• 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.¹²³

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.¹⁴

Sources

1. Mahjong tiles, Wikipedia
2. 麻雀牌, Wikipedia (Chinese) Chinese
3. 麻雀牌, Wikipedia (Japanese) Japanese
4. Mahjong, Wikipedia