At a D.C. library, camaraderie flourishes through mah-jongg

Washington Post

2 days ago

A brief silence descended on the table as Alejandro Bolivar-Cervoni checked the symbols on the white rectangular tiles in front of him to see whether he had the sets to win the game.
'Mah-jongg!' he said as he tipped the tiles over to show the three other players on his table his winning sets.
The tiles clacked loudly as they hit the table, briefly overtaking the lively chatter of people playing mah-jongg at a dozen other tables similarly laid out at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library on a warm Tuesday evening last month.
'I think if you look at this room, it's so diverse. … It's so important to feel like I can connect to the broader D.C. community,' Bolivar-Cervoni, 34, said. 'And I think it's like the biggest slice of life, the fact that I get to come here every Tuesday and just get to meet with people from all different parts of the city, all different backgrounds.'
Mah-jongg night has become one of the library's most popular programs since the first game on April 1. The weekly sessions have attracted around 70 D.C. residents of different ages, ethnic groups, economic backgrounds and skill levels.
Bolivar-Cervoni's reason for learning mah-jongg was a personal one: He wanted to honor the memory of his late friend who used to play the game. He joined the mah-jongg sessions at the D.C. Public Library in late May after seeing an ad on a Capital Jewish Museum mailing list.
In two months, he formed meaningful friendships with other D.C. residents who joined the sessions.
'It gives me a lot of civic pride to know my tax dollars go to support this place, and I get to really enjoy it and see this community,' said Bolivar-Cervoni, a marketing analyst manager.
Across the table, Ardavan Heavans, 50, shuffled and lined up the mah-jongg tiles, getting ready to play another round. Heavans learned to play the Chinese style of the game from his grandmother in Pakistan when he was 5, and he continued to play when his family came to the United States in 1988. He learned to play the American version of the game when he moved to D.C. 20 years later.
He said the game transcends cultures and fosters community.
'The world, you know, is so hectic and politics [are] dividing so many groups of people,' Heavans said. 'So, the game is just magical that it has a way of silencing that noise, even if it is for a couple of hours.'
Jenna Fischer, 28, learned to play the American style of the game from her mother when she was in middle school and was looking to pick it back up when she heard about the mah-jongg sessions at the library from a friend. Fischer, who lost her job at the U.S. Institute of Peace earlier this year, said that she would have joined and made time for the game nights even if she still had her job.
She said mah-jongg nights have created a space where politics is not a priority and the group of players have built their own community.
'I think it's part of D.C. that I might not always get to meet,' Fischer said. 'It's really great to come back and see the same faces and get to know people, in a very often divided city.'
April Ovens, the library's support coordinator, introduced the mah-jongg program after she was approached by game instructors Jennie Mak and Jon Gann separately in March. She did not expect the program to become as popular as it did in four months, she said, but was pleasantly surprised to see D.C. residents of various backgrounds take an interest in learning and playing the game.
The library opens its doors to residents every Tuesday evening from 6 to 8 p.m. It offers participants the opportunity to learn two styles of mah-jongg free — Chinese, taught by Mak, and American, taught by Gann and David Horowitz.
Mak, 54, teaches the Chinese variation of mah-jongg — the Hong Kong style, which she used to play with her family as a child there. As a part-time Cantonese language teacher, she started teaching the game to her students last year as a way to immerse them in the language. She then branched out to teach groups of people interested in learning mah-jongg across Virginia and D.C., including at the Cleveland Park Library.
She contacted Ovens at the beginning of the year when she saw a growing interest in the game among D.C. residents.
'Mah-jongg is not just a game to me. It's like part of my culture,' Mak said.
Gann, 59, a film producer, hosts game sessions with Horowitz, 60, a health policy analyst at the Shaw/Watha T. Daniel Neighborhood Library and the Capital Jewish Museum.
Mah-jongg originated in China hundreds of years ago and was introduced to the United States in the 1920s. The game is played in several styles, including Chinese, American and Riichi, the Japanese style.
Chinese mah-jongg sets consist of 144 tiles engraved with symbols of circles, bamboos, dragons and Chinese characters. American mah-jongg is played with 152 tiles, including jokers, that are similarly designed to the Chinese sets but have numbers on them. The game is played by four people.
The tiles are shuffled and arranged to make a wall that forms a square. The players take turns drawing a tile from the wall and discard another tile in the middle of the table until they form a winning hand.
In Chinese mah-jongg, the first player to build a combination of four sets of three and a pair of tiles wins the game. The American style uses the same principle, but players also refer to a card issued by the National Mah Jongg League annually that dictates the set combinations that win the game for that year. The combinations change every year.
Mah-jongg was typically played by Chinese and Jewish women, but Horowitz said he has seen a flurry of younger people and men walking through the front doors of the library.
Mak said the program has allowed D.C. residents to connect with each other in the past few months.
'We've all been through a lot,' Mak said about the impact of politics on D.C. and its residents. She said the players have built a community by playing the game.
'There's a safe place for us,' she said.