Mahjong, also known as "sparrow", originated in ancient times in the mainland, is loved by hundreds of millions of Chinese gaming lovers, and has won many foreign fans. However, there are still different opinions about the origin time and inventor of mahjong. The only thing that is certain at present is that mahjong originated in the Ming Dynasty, Zheng He is considered its inventor, and the story and moral behind it are worth mentioning.
Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng He was ordered to lead a fleet to the Western Ocean seven times, traveling more than 100,000 miles, known as "Zheng He's Seven Voyages to the Western Ocean". During the long sea voyages, the life of sailors was inevitably monotonous. In order to pass the free time, Zheng He invented a game called "bamboo cards".
At that time, boating mainly relied on wind power, so the "east, south, west, and north" wind became the basic element of Bamboo. In the old-fashioned mahjong, the "wind" card is particularly important, and the four winds need to be used to "pull the bank" when booking a seat. Each wind is a circle, and the four circles are played after the heavy "pull", which means the auspicious meaning of "the wind from all sides".
The ship travels on the sea, and the sail needs ropes to open the sail and drop the sail, and the cable is required to untie the anchor and tie the anchor, so there are one to nine "ropes" in the bamboo card. A large rope or chain is called a "rope", so it is also called a cable. Nowadays we often call it "sliver", which is more intuitive. In addition, sailors would fill wooden barrels or bamboo tubes with fresh water before going to sea and store them in the cabins, so there were also 1 to 9 "tubes" in the cards.
Zheng He led the sailors to go to sea as an official task, and his wife and children at home needed to be taken care of. And overseas, in order to maintain the "great prestige", sailors need to have funds for food and shopping after going ashore. Therefore, the royal family allocated tens of thousands of copper coins to each ship and distributed them to sailors, so the word "10,000" was also included in the card.
In addition, the sailors had money and could purchase exotic objects and start a small business. If you choose "medium" when shopping, you will be rich, but if you don't, you may lose all your money. Therefore, the bamboo card has added three cards of "medium, hair, and white". At the same time, sailors often do not remember the date at sea, only distinguish the change of seasons, so the bamboo card has added "spring, summer, autumn and winter" four flower cards.
This is the composition of the earliest mahjong in ancient times on the mainland. Another theory believes that Wan Binghui of the Ming Dynasty was inspired by the one hundred and eight generals in the "Water Margin" to invent mahjong. Mahjong is based on 108 cards, a metaphor for 108 heroes. For example, nine represents the "nine dragons" Shi Jin, two represents the "double whip" Hu Yanzhuo, and one cake represents the "black whirlwind" Li Kui. The three categories of Wan, cake and strip are taken from the homonym of Wan Bingji's name. There are four cards from one to nine in each category, for a total of 108 cards. With the addition of four cards in each of the five directions of East, West, South, North and Central, as well as eight cards in the metaphor of wealth and poverty in "Fa" and "White", a total of 136 cards. With the addition of flower cards, the whole deck of cards is 144 cards in total.
As for the origin of the name "mahjong", there is no way to verify. And whether the "will" in "mahjong" is related to the "will" of the one hundred and eight generals of the Water Margin, can only be guessed.